tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14373779582829968622024-02-07T11:03:29.745-08:00The view from BrittanyA Breton's perspective on the worldDamien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-62589719686113660842013-10-24T05:46:00.003-07:002013-10-24T05:46:51.673-07:00Green bankruptcy<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVJoC94D80-R6nf2ZFeVWWN0vdWcy8lxxQjNIFuTIkx0uRBGZUpuYLKKjSM2cNJyHsafqfcPZqvHIlo3E_Zje8Y0UDVXhsfRoYv_iquQyhHLnq0sVcCL6slwCycki5tSJo2trr_O4FmyY/s1600/800px-Bdk-oldenburg-2005-kuenast.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVJoC94D80-R6nf2ZFeVWWN0vdWcy8lxxQjNIFuTIkx0uRBGZUpuYLKKjSM2cNJyHsafqfcPZqvHIlo3E_Zje8Y0UDVXhsfRoYv_iquQyhHLnq0sVcCL6slwCycki5tSJo2trr_O4FmyY/s320/800px-Bdk-oldenburg-2005-kuenast.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span>There
have been a lot of bad news for Eupropean Green parties lately and it
must be said that those woes are not really undeserved. In Germany,
the local Green Party had commissioned Franz Walter and Stephan
Klecha, both of the Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research to
search the party’s archives and clear it from accusations of having
defended pedophilia during the eighties. Unfortunately – for the
Greens – they proved the accusations were very founded and that the
Greens’ position on the issue was then a close approximation of
NAMBLA’s. </span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
may have had an impact on the – disastrous for the Greens –
elections which followed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In
France, the Greens are a part of the government. A few weeks ago,
their (not so a) leader Pascal Durand, <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>discovered<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>
that said government did not intend to do anything about the energy
transition and threatened a mass resignation if a few measures were
not taken. The Green ministers had a quick look at their paycheck,
decided they wanted another one, and convened that Pascal Durand
should lead the way by resigning from his leadership.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Needless
to say, this has slightly tarnished their already dubious reputation.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd6iwSpbEs0BuSoT68swhXCLHKXsPaET_clbADExaGm-CSDc8fjjeS729lIHf8TVv58VJUHXvzvdozsPCxjI6QKFnBR0mkS7TYHB6FQnjyNbRxB-T5pqDHnY72nh8SakJCpkD3GilOOto/s1600/800px-EVA_JOLY_038.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd6iwSpbEs0BuSoT68swhXCLHKXsPaET_clbADExaGm-CSDc8fjjeS729lIHf8TVv58VJUHXvzvdozsPCxjI6QKFnBR0mkS7TYHB6FQnjyNbRxB-T5pqDHnY72nh8SakJCpkD3GilOOto/s320/800px-EVA_JOLY_038.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Of
course, the Greens are not the only ones to have defended dubious
causes back in the days. In 1977 a number of French pundits,
Jean-Paul Sartre, Bernard Kouchner and Jack Lang among them, had
signed a petition in support of three pedophiles, which hasn’t kept
two of them from becoming ministers in very un-green governments
later on. As for using one’s status as a minor ally of the
dominant party to get jobs one will later be reluctant to relinquish
even if that means sitting on one’s ideals... it is a national
sport in France, and my own party is quite guilty of that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Yet,
the Greens, at least in France, embody those faults far better than
the other parties and are frequently lambasted for this, even in the
rather cynical political world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
is partly due to their drawing much of their support from the urban
upper middle class, who have no interest in changing a social
structure they mightily benefit from, but still wants to enjoy the
moral high ground. This is not the whole story, however.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As
Franz Walter stated : </span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Nature
conservation and sustainable development are not a fertile ground for
pedophilia and child abuse. The Greens, however, have a second agenda
which, curiously is not compatible with the first, a kind of radical
liberalism combined with a strong individualistic hedonism. In this
environment, emerged in the 1970s, before the foundation of the
Greens, the claims for decriminalization of sex offenses and a
tolerance of sex between adults and children. In the early 1980s,
part of this radical liberalism made its way into the Greens.</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiulqXNNI3WbK8xWFMrkNQX_9LSl79lyq57bW2jdAMGL7a5pM-XkuGq2A-JXH_nFsDz14IOPQSSe5A12fhZyG0d4YS9rO14Nxkkl-tN3xeQdSUTEeKvG3D3sjsKgi4_jdFr1p_MkJl4IS0/s1600/800px-The_Course_of_Empire_The_Savage_State_Thomas_Cole_1836.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiulqXNNI3WbK8xWFMrkNQX_9LSl79lyq57bW2jdAMGL7a5pM-XkuGq2A-JXH_nFsDz14IOPQSSe5A12fhZyG0d4YS9rO14Nxkkl-tN3xeQdSUTEeKvG3D3sjsKgi4_jdFr1p_MkJl4IS0/s320/800px-The_Course_of_Empire_The_Savage_State_Thomas_Cole_1836.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Nature
conservation was not, at the beginning, a progressive issue. The
project of the Enlightenment was to use rationality, and only
rationality, to deal with the world. That meant getting rid of the
influence of the churches but also establishing the dominance of Man
over Nature so as to create in this world the paradise the churches
promised us for the next. Note that does not necessarily meant
democracy. Freedom of speech and rationality could, and did, flourish
in an undemocratic context, such as Frederick II’s Prussia of
Joseph II’s Austria and most enlightened philosophers of the time
denied any legitimacy to the opinion of the people, opposing, like
D’Alembert, <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>truly
enlightened public" with "the blind and noisy multitude".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Nature
conservation did not come either from the first opponents of the
Enlightenment, the Counter-Revolutionists such as Joseph de Maistre.
Those rejected the rule of reason because it threatened the
(traditional) social order and undermined the dominance of the
Church. The other branch of counter-enlightenment, romanticism, was
totally different. It was often very critical of the old social order
and of established religion. Romanticists spearheaded the
revolutions and the national revolts of the nineteenth century,
opposing dynastic legitimacy in the name, not of rationality, but of
the peoples.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Romanticism
opposed not rationality itself but rationality’s claim to
supremacy. Romanticists valued the emotional and the atavistic, and
they certainly could not find that in the rarefied atmosphere of the
salons of the enlightened elite. Hence came their love for nature, as
well as for folk traditions and medieval tales.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
yielded ethnic nationalism – which, at the beginning was the idea
that the common people,</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhom5BWVQgqbZLdlc2K-C-iuV7ru26RIEHZDLO1b7DFuaGZ1gqXZZNSEMZ9v2GWV6QEceQ9i17VkRLABJgYRfvmpGGUrBEmg8NEnRm_AsMvMk1to69KLC-tPvicidg4YEQY-xibqfC9kp4/s1600/The_Bard_(1774).jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhom5BWVQgqbZLdlc2K-C-iuV7ru26RIEHZDLO1b7DFuaGZ1gqXZZNSEMZ9v2GWV6QEceQ9i17VkRLABJgYRfvmpGGUrBEmg8NEnRm_AsMvMk1to69KLC-tPvicidg4YEQY-xibqfC9kp4/s320/The_Bard_(1774).jpeg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> not some enlightened elite, should rule –
but also a deep reverence for nature. One can find this ideology
among the Wandervögel, a German back-to-nature youth organization
emphasizing freedom, self-responsibility, and the spirit of
adventure, or in the agrarian conservatism of Tolkien, whose heroes,
please remember, are not princes but pipe-smoking undersized farmers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Needless
to say this ideology was deeply illiberal and not very fond of the
mythology of progress.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">German
romanticism, however, took a wrong turn during the nineteenth century
when the dream of back-to-the-land self-sufficiency got mixed down
with Austrian esoterism and racial mysticism. The end result was the
ideological cancer of Nazism and an apocalyptic war which buried
ecological concerns under the ruins and made sure that when they
would resurface, it would be on the left.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit8FrRQOT_innTRye9s2gNoA0BTARKR4Q-YCtdP6_b9mEBNmeQYSz7t7lyM370xZwX468lQBXoncTpGI9PpLTBzYXREATS4BypkxfSnvuOuq45Thf623wGLmVjb9xpjoit7e1PqHcaDJk/s1600/wan-vogel2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit8FrRQOT_innTRye9s2gNoA0BTARKR4Q-YCtdP6_b9mEBNmeQYSz7t7lyM370xZwX468lQBXoncTpGI9PpLTBzYXREATS4BypkxfSnvuOuq45Thf623wGLmVjb9xpjoit7e1PqHcaDJk/s1600/wan-vogel2.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
problem was that it happened during the late sixties, just as the
left, until them dominated by socialism, reconfigured itself. As left
radicalism was embraced by the growing middle classes, there was a
focus away from the concerns of the working classes toward hedonism
and individualism. It is not by chance that, in France, the events of
may 1968 began with a protest over the right for boys to visit the
girls’ dormitory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">These
ideas came, not from socialism, which was very ambivalent toward
individualism, but from classical liberalism, that is from the
Enlightenment. They, of course, continue its Messianic ambitions and
dellusions. </span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
revolt of the sixties against the rigid post-war order was salutary
in many ways. Many injustices had to be redressed, notably in favor
of women, gays and racial minorities. Considering them like people
certainly was a great advance on the way toward a decent society. The
lack of involvement with the labor movement and the prevalence of
middle class individualistic values among activists ensured, however,
that the political organizations born the New Left would be liberal,
in the European meaning of the word.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbJnbpZV9-wXZoqs4reY7uQnS9XZYuAiDbvRkPK_F_0UtffCbsk5UZxVXZ-HUqwwuOwLZAk6do_H5ZEwlAeJcgE_I8xSfhN4OlRwYRQNOT_tRunF620mZr4aor6_2d9d4blkEmRlY0YJo/s1600/Caspar_David_Friedrich_032_(The_wanderer_above_the_sea_of_fog).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbJnbpZV9-wXZoqs4reY7uQnS9XZYuAiDbvRkPK_F_0UtffCbsk5UZxVXZ-HUqwwuOwLZAk6do_H5ZEwlAeJcgE_I8xSfhN4OlRwYRQNOT_tRunF620mZr4aor6_2d9d4blkEmRlY0YJo/s320/Caspar_David_Friedrich_032_(The_wanderer_above_the_sea_of_fog).jpg" width="250" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
Greens are one such organization and here lies the problem. As Franz
Walter said their two ideological engines are not compatible. You
cannot at the same time defend individualism and community solutions,
hedonism and sobriety, progress and sustainability. Sooner or later,
as with the Social-democrat parties, one of the two agendas will be
put to the back-burner or replaced by noisy tokenism. Since
mitigating the effect of peak energy is likely to involve very
unpopular measures we can safely bet that societal issues, on which
an agreement can be easily reached with Social-democrat parties, will
come to the forefront, along with those Paul Kingsnorth call
<a href="http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7277">neo-environmentalists</a>.
This is already the case to some extend. The French Greens have been
far more vocal about the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonarda_Dibrani">Leonarda
Dibrani case</a> than about the planned prolongation of the lifetime
of the country’s nuclear plants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">For
groups rooted in the upper “bobo” middle class, it is the path of
least resistance, and it is why it is becoming more and more
dominant, relegating the romantic vision and the notion of limits to
the fringes – and sometimes, it must be said, forcing them into
shady neighborhoods.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">That
means that the Green parties will become more and more irrelevant to
our predicament and less and less likely to bring a constructive
response to the ecological crisis. In fact, they will probably delay
the emergence, at the political level, of a true political answer to
peak energy, free from the mythology of progress, the liberal
delusion, but also from the cancerous remnants of the völkish
perversion.</span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Yet,
this is what we must work on if we want to face the coming energy descent without falling into the same cancerous traps as German Romanticism</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVJoC94D80-R6nf2ZFeVWWN0vdWcy8lxxQjNIFuTIkx0uRBGZUpuYLKKjSM2cNJyHsafqfcPZqvHIlo3E_Zje8Y0UDVXhsfRoYv_iquQyhHLnq0sVcCL6slwCycki5tSJo2trr_O4FmyY/s1600/800px-Bdk-oldenburg-2005-kuenast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-74314556569174306372013-09-25T02:21:00.002-07:002013-09-25T02:21:19.210-07:00On socialism
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx9YdCS-LEnVZTzEPvnZKQKWhiHv1NhJalKYbuZ2noC7AXAtEAnM_fQD94MYKYtdj3ui42HlcSlM5_fNt_im4akT9NLQYN4hMJYT5gXjz60Wj-3ztBzAa3aJJSDEIWUnrQaREMLlcECzo/s1600/60611_10151934300823408_365525910_n.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx9YdCS-LEnVZTzEPvnZKQKWhiHv1NhJalKYbuZ2noC7AXAtEAnM_fQD94MYKYtdj3ui42HlcSlM5_fNt_im4akT9NLQYN4hMJYT5gXjz60Wj-3ztBzAa3aJJSDEIWUnrQaREMLlcECzo/s400/60611_10151934300823408_365525910_n.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As
you probably don’t know, France is ruled by a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_(France)">Socialist
Party</a>. Of course, this party is no more socialist than the
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_Revolutionary_Party">Institutional
Revolutionary Party</a> is revolutionary. It is a pro-statu-quo party
defending the interests (and the self-righteousness) of the urban
elites and, to a lesser extend, of civil servants. Like all socialist
or social-democrat parties in Europe, it talks about social reforms
and implements a few societal ones, mostly aimed at its upper-middle
class clientele. Like all socialist or social-democrat parties in
Europe it is also a tool to select candidates to political offices
and distribute jobs and petty privileges to its members, a role it
fulfills in ever more conformist a way. In that matter, as in the
actual policies it implements when in charge, it is not different
from its right wing rivals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Its
relationship with what is generally called socialism was rhetorical
from the start and is becoming more and more historical with time.
This, more than the Cuban or North-Korean <i>carcinomas in situ
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">highlights the failure of
socialism both as an ideology and a political practice, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">even
within the ephemeral framework of our civilization.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA9oKphedvQGSyZJ3Xmcq3v-Z0as3j1Imz34aw-MK1SsDZGjR2q62IIAb_rMyvL76yVpgwvzsp1prSc6mcNeQGrPiiOOWs1NrpNMd-l0_J3dJBlb6zrTY01BuKI3O9S_DlgckXw-tjTqc/s1600/New_harmony_vision.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA9oKphedvQGSyZJ3Xmcq3v-Z0as3j1Imz34aw-MK1SsDZGjR2q62IIAb_rMyvL76yVpgwvzsp1prSc6mcNeQGrPiiOOWs1NrpNMd-l0_J3dJBlb6zrTY01BuKI3O9S_DlgckXw-tjTqc/s320/New_harmony_vision.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
word socialism was coined by Robert Owen, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">a Welsh entrepreneur with a humanitarian bent, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">in
1817</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> in a report to the House
of Common titled </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">"</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;">Plans
for alleviating poverty through Socialism</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">".
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
idea was to create communities of some 1,200 persons all living in
one large building in the form of a square, with public kitchen and
mess-rooms. Each family should have its own private apartments and
the entire care of the children till the age of three, after which
they should be brought up by the community. There should be perfect
equality of wages. In times, those communities would cover the world
because... because it was just so great, you know.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Needless
to say, the </span></span><span style="font-style: normal;">House of
Common </span><span style="font-style: normal;">was nonplussed, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">even
if it was to create, some 17 years latter, special houses for
paupers... in a very different spirit since they were explicitly
designed to provide worse working condition than the worst job
available outside them. </span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Owen
nevertheless persevered, creating various communities, all of which
failed spectacularly. The best known of these was New Harmony, in
Indiana, which lasted only two years and of which Josiah Warren wrote
: </span></span>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>It
seemed that the difference of opinion, tastes and purposes increased
just in proportion to the demand for conformity. Two years were worn
out in this way; at the end of which, I believe that not more than
three persons had the least hope of success. Most of the
experimenters left in despair of all reforms, and conservatism felt
itself confirmed. We had tried every conceivable form of organization
and government. We had a world in miniature. --we had enacted the
French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of
corpses as a result. ...It appeared that it was nature's own inherent
law of diversity that had conquered us ...our 'united interests' were
directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances
and the instinct of self-preservation...<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
failure of Owen and of its many imitators, notably Fourrier and
Cabet,, resulted in the marginalization of utopian socialis</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">m</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">,
even though the idea of intentional communities </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">still
survive</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
and enjoys, from time to time, ephemeral renewals of interest. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">These
experiments, which were numerous in America during the XIX</span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">,</span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
</span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> century </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">continued
the religious communal experiments of the past centur</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ies</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">,
but with a key difference. Unlike in Catholic monasteries </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">or
Anabaptist communities, the main goal was not to get the faithful
away from the world so that they could reach salvation, but to set an
example </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">that the world should,
eventually, follow</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In
that, socialism, despite what some modern authors such as Michea </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">say</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">,
was, from the start, a child of the mythology of progress. It</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">goal</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
has always been to end misery and inequalities through the
application of reason and the domination of Man over </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Nature.
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Its main difference with what
was called the left during the XIX</span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
century was its attitude </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">toward
individualism.</span></span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Neither
Owen’s utopian socialism, nor the two </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">faction</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s
which battled for the control of the first socialist organizations
(Marxism and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Bakounine’s
anarchism), </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">were particularly
high on individualism. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
should be obvious for Marx, and while Proudhon and Bakounine rejected
anything which remotely looked like a law or a political authority,
their vision of society looked nothing like Ayn Rand’s. To quote
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Proudhon : </span></span>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Under
the law of association, transmission of wealth does not apply to the
instruments of labour, so cannot become a cause of inequality... We
are socialists... under universal association, ownership of the land
and of the instruments of labour is social ownership... We want the
mines, canals, railways handed over to democratically organised
workers' associations... We want these associations to be models for
agriculture, industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast
federation of companies and societies, joined together in the common
bond of the democratic and social Republic.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In
fact, until the end the XIX</span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
century, socialism considered itself as a third force, without any
connection with the (then counter-revolutionary) right, but also with
the left, which was the party of change, progress and freedom of
trade. Even though socialism, in all its incarnation</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">,
is clearly a child of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">E</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">nlightenment
since it aims </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">to</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
free humanity from </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">its
condition. Yet, it was ambivalent toward the cult of change and of
"innovation" </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">so
characteristic of the left</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">. To
quote the Communist Manifesto :</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The
bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production,
and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old
modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the
first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.
Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of
all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation
distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed,
fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air,
all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face
with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations
with his kind.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Marx
and Engels obviously did not consider this permanent disruption a
pleasant process. They did, however, consider it a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">necessary
stage on the road to socialism. To quote them again.</span></span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>A
similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois
society with its relations of production, of exchange and of
property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of
production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer
able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up
by his spells.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In
short, it is because bourgeois rule is destructive that it creates
the conditions for the advent of socialism and humanity’s escape
out of history. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">It
is, of course, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">pure
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">premilenialist
logic, but, at least, it assumes that the atomization and permanent
disruption brought about by the Industrial Society is a bad thing –
the work of the Devil.</span></span></span></div>
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</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We
are light-years away from both classical liberalism and </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Socialist
Party members like Donique Strauss Kahn, who claims that "socialism
is hope, future and innovation".</span></span></span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Traditional
socialism was a critic of modernity, even if a flawed one. It came,
however, to ally with the liberal left at the end of the XIX</span></span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">th</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
century to keep the reactionary right to get back into power, at
least in Europe. In France it happened during the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair">Dreyfus
affair</a>. At first, French Socialist </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">viewed</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
the whole thing as a "Bourgeois civil war" and refused to
take side. Faced with the </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">real
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">possibility
of a far right coup, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">however,</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
they decided to </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">ally</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">with
the liberal left (then called Republicans, in opposition to the
royalist right).</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
result has been a gradual ideological absorption of socialism by
liberalism – and ironically the </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">marginalization
of the liberal parties in all European democracies. This was by no
way a fast or smooth process. In France, where the Communist Party
remained strong well into the eighties, it was completed only during
the presidency of François Mitterand, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">even
though the trend was visible as soon as the late sixties.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
Of course, this has been helped by </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">the
Russian Revolution, the victory of which pushed traditionally minded
socialists onto the way to totalitarianism. Once it was associated
with the soviet cancerous nightmare, traditional, working-class
oriented socialism was bound to collapse with it, leaving the field
to liberalism, with its celebration of permanent change, progress and
its cult of the individual.</span></span></span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Of
course, traditional socialism was bound to fail. As I have said, it
was a child of the enlightenment and it aimed to get humanity out of
history into some kind of secular heaven. This heaven is certainly
more decent – to use Orwell’s word and concept – than its
liberal counterpart, but that does not mean it was ever possible on a
finite planet.</span></div>
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</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Had
the Russian Revolution failed, a </span></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">decent</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
socialism, of the kind Orwell advocated might have established itself
in Europe, with both democratic institutions </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">and
sharp limits to the mercantile logic. It would still have pursued
growth, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">however,</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
and would still have collided, with potentially disastrous
consequences, with the limits of Earth’s resources.</span></span></span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Marx
and Engels disliked Malthus, and not only because Malthus’ thesis
was morally abhorrent – it was, by the way. Socialism, as befits a
"modern" ideology as always sought to free humanity from
its historical condition, and that is impossible as long as resource</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">s</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
remain scarce. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Marx,
like many authors of his time, thought scientific and technological
progress, would ultimately make scarcity a thing if the past. We know
now that it was a delusion. The fossil resources, which gave our
civilization, an unprecedented prosperity are being depleted </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">at
an alarming rate, and it is only a matter of time before the amount
of energy available</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">to
our society begins to decrease in absolute terms – it is probably
already the case for net energy.</span></span></span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Our
ability to to keep our society working will decrease at the same pace
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">and
e</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">ventually,
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">our
civilization</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
will fragment and collapse, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">leaving
only ruins in the jungle</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
Whether </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">said
society</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
is socialist, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">liberal
or anticapitalist is totally irrelevant to the process.</span></span></span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In
that respect, the eco-socialist ideologies which are being developed
here and there, are mostly attempts to salvage the messianic
ambitions of socialism, that is the very element that doomed it to
failure. Often, they amount to nothing more than saying that it’s
all the big bad capitalists’ fault, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">since
everybody knows that North Korea is a gigantic wildlife preserve as
well as a workers’ paradise.</span></span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">This
does not mean, however, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">that
socialism</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
has nothing to offer </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">the
future. It needs, however, to get away from dogma and go back to its
roots, that is the moral revolt against the destructive and
dehumanizing effect</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">s</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
of the industrial revolution, a revolt which was not that different
from the romanticists’, even if it had a different focus. This is
the approach of Orwell, Lasch and Michea, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">and
this moral indignation will remain valid long after socialist dogmas
will have be made irrelevant </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">by
the fall of the industrial economy. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">This
moral indignation is not only an appeal to society being decent,
albeit if it also that. It is the refusal to let mercantile logic
invade the whole of society. It is no more a new idea than the
romanticists’ call for a re-enchanted world but socialism is the
first ideology to express it clearly.</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoy-UEh5BL-JzWfJvoyIsg6sCzc1BsF0dBbOy0LCMq6A2MbDEAECdiLS7tTTGj2IMcbZAMWywH6A4oU6gWxCHq6ylAyZzK-gGTF9ki2Qy-16Sd8xpj7GATAz6Bmku2EgX8FGOv3sx6Gj8/s1600/Quarto_Stato.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoy-UEh5BL-JzWfJvoyIsg6sCzc1BsF0dBbOy0LCMq6A2MbDEAECdiLS7tTTGj2IMcbZAMWywH6A4oU6gWxCHq6ylAyZzK-gGTF9ki2Qy-16Sd8xpj7GATAz6Bmku2EgX8FGOv3sx6Gj8/s320/Quarto_Stato.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Despite
its failure, at least in that particular civilization, it leaves a
heritage worth preserving and transmitting. The same way reason
should not be allowed to invade the entirety of a civilization’s
mental space, mercantile logic should remain strictly subordinate to
this civilization’s core values, and notably what Orwell called
<i>common decency</i>, that is the basic, unwritten but nearly
universal rules our species evolved to make life in society livable.
This does not mean, by the way, the elimination of private property –
which is the surest way to tyranny – but its subordination to the
interests and values of the community. </span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">If
we manage to transmit this heritage across the coming dark age to
future civilizations, the efforts of generations of activists, no
matter how flawed and misguided they might have been from time to
time, will not have been vain.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">But
of course, don’t expect any <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>socialist
party<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span> to play any role in
that, they are too busy drinking champagne and celebrating <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>future<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>
and <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>innovation<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx9YdCS-LEnVZTzEPvnZKQKWhiHv1NhJalKYbuZ2noC7AXAtEAnM_fQD94MYKYtdj3ui42HlcSlM5_fNt_im4akT9NLQYN4hMJYT5gXjz60Wj-3ztBzAa3aJJSDEIWUnrQaREMLlcECzo/s1600/60611_10151934300823408_365525910_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-1357778688331503462013-09-11T03:09:00.001-07:002013-09-11T03:09:40.235-07:00The Great Pruning
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-FrGJc4XI28gM2jaNhBYHi5JVVgZgHcTxXJUK4D5yD2HMOipM2UhBa5f4_Atd87mzDCifWVJnxm2Pw7XU5mIFOqDlCImomQP6MAJ8CwKV7iWHzH27ZyzMZDV5Zfj-odQClm1CIkRsy04/s1600/Necronomicon-hp-lovecraft-31775757-544-735.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-FrGJc4XI28gM2jaNhBYHi5JVVgZgHcTxXJUK4D5yD2HMOipM2UhBa5f4_Atd87mzDCifWVJnxm2Pw7XU5mIFOqDlCImomQP6MAJ8CwKV7iWHzH27ZyzMZDV5Zfj-odQClm1CIkRsy04/s320/Necronomicon-hp-lovecraft-31775757-544-735.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Collapses
result in considerable cultural loss and there is no reason to think
that the coming one will be an exception. In fact it is likely that
the losses, in this domain like in many others, will be larger than
most. To begin with, we have more to loose. Fossil fuels have enabled
us to both feed and educate more people than at any other time in
history. More than two millions books are published world-wide every
single year. This is far beyond the capacity of a post-peak,
presumably agrarian, society to conserve. This is still more true of
movies or television films, which become useless once you have lost
the capacity to rerun them. Besides, our storage media have a very
limited lifespan and can only be accessed with energy-intensive
devices we are very likely to lose during the coming energy descent.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Where
medieval books are still readable after a century, our CDs, DVDs and
hard drives won’t survive ours and even if they do, they will be as
readable for our deindustrial descendants as an eight tracks
cartridge or a betamax tape is for the average westerner. When we
realize this, our first reaction is to follow the tracks of
Saint-Leibowitz and try to preserve as much as we can of our
civilization’s cultural heritage.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
is definitely a worthy goal and some parts of our culture need to be
salvaged and transmitted if we want future civilizations to be more
successful than our own. As the Archdruid stated, ours is the first
technological civilization in history. Others will come and we must
make sure they are in position to build upon the foundations we have
laid.</span></span></div>
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</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTBgLxvKMADT0OqBW3pDhuzACcNfK9YPHod8coLYaPIWK8C-xKc4RyXKkqC8fFcZ1aiSDh8SX70kb7CsyroIa4Ql4YsJTPg3bnwujVqAYKhMtOLQNVBwfZoytYRzfrNVtJuT_649Rh-90/s1600/A_Scribe_or_Copyist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTBgLxvKMADT0OqBW3pDhuzACcNfK9YPHod8coLYaPIWK8C-xKc4RyXKkqC8fFcZ1aiSDh8SX70kb7CsyroIa4Ql4YsJTPg3bnwujVqAYKhMtOLQNVBwfZoytYRzfrNVtJuT_649Rh-90/s320/A_Scribe_or_Copyist.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Yet,
this strategy of transmission can disastrously backfire. Our society
is doomed to collapse because of its reliance on non-renewable
resources but also because, despite being aware of the situation, it
has chosen to ignore it. The Meadows Report was published in 1972,
when we still had a chance to establish a sustainable technological
civilization without paying too high a price. There are deep cultural
reasons for that, among which our obsession with “progress” and
the dominance of what we call liberalism in Europe, that is the
neutrality of the states toward values.</span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As
the French philosopher Jean-Claude Michéa convincingly argued,
liberalism emerged from the XVI<sup>th</sup> and XVII<sup>th</sup>
century religious wars in Europe. Having lived through a period of
highly disruptive religious wars. In a civilization where religion
held so central a place, such wars demanded an intellectual response
lest they tear apart the very fabric of the society.</span></span></div>
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</div>
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</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWcI89mWbQMgXYa5YBS0flCf9VKnaOX_2jOiKZ1P8068moDLCHsvWY0o20ikmh7dVRvMdW9IE7g3YhadRTmcyyRod9oDo9GjRjHpdKMiYxgcr23H51nWrMv2NuhOSQYlvamU1b2P0p_6U/s1600/Tertullian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPPpnF211db3lW6BQGW_VIvpRFlW9x3EQqeIz3UzXUM4Dzyg5pKQbOBZyKT7xWhJ-_kBaybkPjzxj37diUbXSmbCTAjCDwSRjgkSTCS6g0wgapA9DSWb-Vxa_I_k4pNrxnweUf4iGmxHA/s1600/Michea-orphee.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPPpnF211db3lW6BQGW_VIvpRFlW9x3EQqeIz3UzXUM4Dzyg5pKQbOBZyKT7xWhJ-_kBaybkPjzxj37diUbXSmbCTAjCDwSRjgkSTCS6g0wgapA9DSWb-Vxa_I_k4pNrxnweUf4iGmxHA/s320/Michea-orphee.jpeg" width="207" /></a><br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
response was liberalism, that is the idea that the state was to be
neutral not only toward religions but also toward values. Of course,
disestablishing organized religions was a good thing, as was the
creation of a private sphere, which allows people to pursue their own
interests without interference from the state. The logic of
liberalism, however, Michea argues, leads to the destruction of the
very notion of common values. Since all values are private and that
the community represented by the state shouldn’t favor any of them,
the only thing which keeps the society together is the relentless
pursuit of wealth and the merchant sphere ultimately invades all
other social spheres. Besides, since there is no common conception of
the common good, conflicts are decided through appeals to emotion,
hence the “oppression Olympics” and the shameless exhibitionism
which characterize today’s politics – the Femens are a case in
point but they are hardly alone.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
availability of cheap and abundant fossil fuels definitely helped the
development of the progress myth and the slow destruction of
communities and of what Orwell called Common Decency. It made
possible for the progress myth to fulfill its promises, at least for
a time, which was quite an advantage over, say, traditional
Christianity. The enlightenment, however, is older, by at least a
century than the Industrial revolution and without it the mythology
of progress would not have taken hold and the transition to a
sustainable civilization far easier.</span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWcI89mWbQMgXYa5YBS0flCf9VKnaOX_2jOiKZ1P8068moDLCHsvWY0o20ikmh7dVRvMdW9IE7g3YhadRTmcyyRod9oDo9GjRjHpdKMiYxgcr23H51nWrMv2NuhOSQYlvamU1b2P0p_6U/s1600/Tertullian.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWcI89mWbQMgXYa5YBS0flCf9VKnaOX_2jOiKZ1P8068moDLCHsvWY0o20ikmh7dVRvMdW9IE7g3YhadRTmcyyRod9oDo9GjRjHpdKMiYxgcr23H51nWrMv2NuhOSQYlvamU1b2P0p_6U/s320/Tertullian.jpg" width="265" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Collapses
destroy the cultural capital of a civilization, relegating once
dominant ideologies to the dustbins of history, erasing whole
philosophical schools. This is sometimes unfortunate. What survived
of classical Greek culture, for instance, was mostly the product of
the aristocratic party. We know very little of the intellectual
production of the democratic party and nothing of the anti-slavery
Athenian movement postulated by Karl Popper. We know also very little
of the competitors of Christianity during the 3<sup>rd</sup> century
BC. The arguments of pagan opponents of Christianity are known only
through (probably highly biased) quotations by Christian authors and
we know still less of the many heretic opponents of early
Catholicism.</span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
can also be fortunate. When at the end of Bronze Age, the Mycenian
palaces were burnt by a bunch of unknown but manifestly very angry
people, the ideology which supported the palatial system was also
destroyed, not just discredited, utterly destroyed. The palatial
economy was a kind of proto-communism in which the ruler collected
the production of the areas under his control and redistributed it to
his followers. Resources were managed by a bureaucracy of scribes and
accountants who controlled also trade and craftsmanship in a
semi-centralized manner. Such a system was not very conductive to
democracy and personal freedom. It also tended to create a lot of
outcasts – the kind of people mid-eastern texts call <i>habiru</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">When
the system was destroyed, not only physically, but also as a concept,
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">the autonomous village
community which emerged from the wreckage, laid the foundations of
the city-states of the classical age </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
with it of the market economy and democracy. Had the palatial </span><span style="font-style: normal;">system
survived, nothing of the sort would have happened.</span></span></span></div>
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</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Of
course, the present economical and political arrangements are
unlikely to survive the energy descent </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
the current elites will definitely be replaced by something else –
probably in a rather messy and brutal way. This does not mean,
however, that the ideological apparatus they have built to justify
their rule, will not resurface </span><span style="font-style: normal;">during
some renaissance. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">That is,
after all, what happened when the Italian scholars of the
Quattrocento rediscovered Greek and Latin authors and rejected,
admittedly only to some extend, the heritage of the Middle-Age.</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUZUyFroKaXFvye3C_Mqmc6sE03T2S4HErmQlxFehLdrTGNJy-1f132W7Gr1HsVzzp1hojVGB1BnRpWLAn0rHp1CjElORmnKPsT6JUXJv0lDrRxdjL2Iaq4dpy4-wgsVz5oEOL3Nfyo80/s1600/765px-NAMA_Tablette_7671.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUZUyFroKaXFvye3C_Mqmc6sE03T2S4HErmQlxFehLdrTGNJy-1f132W7Gr1HsVzzp1hojVGB1BnRpWLAn0rHp1CjElORmnKPsT6JUXJv0lDrRxdjL2Iaq4dpy4-wgsVz5oEOL3Nfyo80/s320/765px-NAMA_Tablette_7671.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">As
we slide down Hubbert’s curve, we’ll have to do some ideological
triage, burying that part of our heritage which has put us into the
mess we are in, and could very well </span><span style="font-style: normal;">put
our descendants into deep troubles </span><span style="font-style: normal;">should
they get seduced by them.</span></span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
very idea of ideological triage will probably sound shocking, if not
downright offensive </span><span style="font-style: normal;">to the
average American. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">European</span><span style="font-style: normal;">s</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
tend to be less sanguine, however. We certainly value freedom of
expression and consider the free confrontation of ideas as
indispensable to the well-being of a decent society. We have also
faced, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">eighty years ago,</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
a cancerous ideology which very nearly plunged our continent into a
new dark age. So we have a very limited tolerance toward those who
tr</span><span style="font-style: normal;">y</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
to revive it.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
French government has recently banned two small far right parties
after the death of a far-left activist at the hands of a skinhead. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">In
many European countries, denying the reality of the Holocaust will
land you in jail </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and very few
of us have a problem with that.</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8cV3vreuQ9cUf8d_vSLjlboA55N3tzjNPjrMEgX1I6DTJhRCmXf_7EFQcP9Ynwu4Twp0a6K4Gk3YcUJGivTY7vexh36v_hlLE7rDWVCPhEh5TZNPQxXIQCGjfceCFexvM5T4Lu4WyFAk/s1600/John-stuart-mill_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8cV3vreuQ9cUf8d_vSLjlboA55N3tzjNPjrMEgX1I6DTJhRCmXf_7EFQcP9Ynwu4Twp0a6K4Gk3YcUJGivTY7vexh36v_hlLE7rDWVCPhEh5TZNPQxXIQCGjfceCFexvM5T4Lu4WyFAk/s320/John-stuart-mill_1.jpg" width="191" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Indeed,
John Stuart Mill, whose seminal book </span><i>On Liberty</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
was instrumental in establishing the modern vision of freedom, stated
that </span><i>"the only purpose for which power can be
rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community,
against his will, is to prevent harm to others."</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
That means that it is perfectly rightful to </span><span style="font-style: normal;">ban
ideas </span><span style="font-style: normal;">when they cause harm to
others. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Please note, by the
way, that there is a difference </span><span style="font-style: normal;">between
harm and offense. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Discrimination
against homosexuals clearly harms people. Homosexuality may offense
hardline Christians, it does not harm them in any meaningful way.</span></span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I
think it is obvious to everyone that </span><span style="font-style: normal;">N</span><span style="font-style: normal;">azism
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">and its various fascist
siblings are harmful. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">So are
racism and homophobia</span><span style="font-style: normal;">, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">as
well as ideologies which <a href="http://etudes-benthamiennes.revues.org/204#tocto2n7">advocate
infanticide</a> and deny personhood to a part of humankind. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">It
is uncertain, however, which part of our </span><span style="font-style: normal;">heritage
is really harmful. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">While our
culture is doubtlessly cancerous, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">it
is far from being universally so. Our habit of treating women like
human beings is certainly worth bequeathing to our successors </span><span style="font-style: normal;">(but
not radical feminism)</span><span style="font-style: normal;">, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">as
is our abhorrence for slavery. So are the rule of law </span><span style="font-style: normal;">(but
not the extension of law to the private sphere)</span><span style="font-style: normal;">,
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">government by consent </span><span style="font-style: normal;">(but
not the trampling of common decency in the name of democracy)</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
and the equal dignity of all men </span><span style="font-style: normal;">(but
not the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">"</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;">ideology
of the same</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">"</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;">)</span><span style="font-style: normal;">,
even if those notions predate our civilization, or the concept </span><span style="font-style: normal;">of
representative democracy, which despite its flaws, allows for
democratic states larger than your average city-state.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">If
the mythology of progress, which is at the core of the Enlightenment,
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">is bound to messily collapse,
some of its derivative</span><span style="font-style: normal;">s may
be very useful to a future civilization, and may even become a
permanent part of human nature – which in a species as ours is as
much cultural as it is natural. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">It
is, after all, what happened with the then radical idea that all men
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">are</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
equal in dignity. It arose from Roman imperialism, was formulated for
the first time by the Stoics and passed into Christianity </span><span style="font-style: normal;">the</span><span style="font-style: normal;">n</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
Islam. While its implementation is still, let’s say imperfect, it
is accepted, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">at least in
theory,</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> by everybody </span><span style="font-style: normal;">outside
the lunatic fringe.</span></span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFYn6w4K-YnEbuRCIDrMMDdkt7LbGwmYE0fqleKniHm3Neb6pfgJMGTwSO3tUhHS9athmdqL5xExgpCjSYHYgnXTGR2KAJ7SMBQLbz7kPlrTiUkCuMfxaRC4U9Mq3IoJJtJZn57yF8zE/s1600/800px-Cole_Thomas_The_Course_of_Empire_Desolation_1836.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFYn6w4K-YnEbuRCIDrMMDdkt7LbGwmYE0fqleKniHm3Neb6pfgJMGTwSO3tUhHS9athmdqL5xExgpCjSYHYgnXTGR2KAJ7SMBQLbz7kPlrTiUkCuMfxaRC4U9Mq3IoJJtJZn57yF8zE/s320/800px-Cole_Thomas_The_Course_of_Empire_Desolation_1836.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">This
handing down of the best of our heritage is not incompatible with the
burying of our worst in </span><span style="font-style: normal;">a
great pruning. In fact, it requires it, if we want </span><span style="font-style: normal;">this</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
best </span><span style="font-style: normal;">to become a part </span><span style="font-style: normal;">of
future cultures </span><span style="font-style: normal;">which will
have every reason to dislike us. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Of
course, burying ideas does not mean burying those who hold them. It
means not saving them, not transmitting and copying them during the
coming long night </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and the
only fire we need for that is the one in our hearths. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Lack
of resources and the necessity of survival will work for us in that
respect.</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span style="font-style: normal;">By
simply focusing our scarcer and scarcer resources on what absolutely
needs saving, we will allow the harmful and the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">useless
to gently slip in the dark. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">We
must, however, be aware of what we do </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
of why we are doing it.</span></span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
cancerous meme</span><span style="font-style: normal;">s</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
in our culture will bring us down. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">There
is little doubt about that, as there is little doubt that future
societies will develop their own, probably very different, cancerous
memes a</span><span style="font-style: normal;">n</span><span style="font-style: normal;">d
succumb to them. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">That is how
civilizations work. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">We must
however make sure that we don’t poison them with our delusions.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
Necronomicon and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource_(book)">The
Ultimate Resource</a> are probably best forgotten, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
if that takes a little help...</span></span></span></div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-88813093807685213502013-07-25T01:10:00.000-07:002013-07-25T01:10:39.149-07:00Remember Tewdrig
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNmjZjnaX2TGHQtBGUibVSXKKe6Qi6sRObdgbKTzyctzm7WuoDyLrN5zTJd-A0T4SNUjvMjOyzuEipEZ-XtH4Z3K65-ib-bQuLBX0NoAAWTcwLrf7oJWwi7Qk0WjHCfsQiB7pEmjsGYe4/s1600/454px-Death.of.Tewdric.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNmjZjnaX2TGHQtBGUibVSXKKe6Qi6sRObdgbKTzyctzm7WuoDyLrN5zTJd-A0T4SNUjvMjOyzuEipEZ-XtH4Z3K65-ib-bQuLBX0NoAAWTcwLrf7oJWwi7Qk0WjHCfsQiB7pEmjsGYe4/s320/454px-Death.of.Tewdric.jpg" width="242" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Mass
migrations, or more specifically mass culture replacement, is one of
the more troubling aspects of peak energy. Doubtlessly the
perspective of witnessing one’s civilization slowly declining is
nothing to be relished. It is not without its charms, however. Even though it
has been largely dethroned by the instant apocalypse meme, the theme
of decline was at the core of romanticism, the first modern revolt
against the industrial world and its disenchanted conception of
reality. It infuses, for instance, the work of Tolkien. Indeed, The
Lord of the Rings can be read as a long elegy upon the passing of the
old glories. It has always been a minority taste and I suspect the
rise of apocalyptic thinking has made it more so, but it has always
been present and it is likely that a significant part of those, who
care about Peak Oil share it. I surely do.</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Envisioning
the complete erasure of one’s culture is another thing altogether. As social primates with a regrettable tendency to die before
our hundredth birthday, we often take some kind of collective as a
projection of our self toward eternity. The two most likely
candidates for this role are of course culture / nation and family.
We are aware that both can be changed beyond recognition by the
advent of peak energy, but as long as they survive, even if nobody
remembers us, the trace of our contribution to the history of
humanity lingers on.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We
know that culture replacement happens, and this knowledge has fed
apocalyptic fears of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Camp_of_the_Saints"><i>Camps
des Saints</i></a> variety, especially but not only in the far right.
Most of the time, they are the consequence of a rise in societal
complexity, whether it manifest through naked imperialism or through
the growth of trade networks. Periods of decreasing societal
complexity, however, often result in cultural fragmentation, with
previously well integrated areas developing their own autonomous
culture and identity, and the replacement of Roman political
authority by Germanic warlords during the fifth century did not
result in local versions of Latin dying out.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In
fact, it was the invaders’ languages and cultures, which
disappeared, sometimes very early. Gothic, Burgondian and Old
Frankish are all dead languages, while the inhabitants of what used to be
their kingdoms speak some form of (admittedly evolved) Latin. It is
easy to see why. The invaders did not move into a vacuum. Even though
the Empire was collapsing, at the provincial and local level, roman
institutions, and notably the Church, retained a lot of strength.
Even those barbarians which were not catholic (the Goths, Vandals and
Sueves, who followed a different brand of Christianity) were forced
to fit within post-roman society to control it (and harvesting its
not inconsiderable wealth). This doomed their cultures and languages
to extinction. Even the Franks, whose empire included Germanic
speaking populations, ultimately merged with their Romance speaking
subjects in what was to become France, probably during the ninth
century.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
main exception, of course, was Britain. There, the invaders
(who were not really invaders as they had been hired) found not a
still functional post-roman society but a collection of tribal states
ruled by warlords. Roman institutions, including the Church, were
weak and the tribal conflicts frozen by the Roman occupation had
flared up again, leading to endemic warfare.</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Of
those wars we know little but the ill-forts and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wansdyke_(earthwork)">defensive
d</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wansdyke_(earthwork)">y</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wansdyke_(earthwork)">kes</a>,
which dot the West</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZNYvwUsXU4XbYNg1oynLsyBZ2OKOJOfBjuaKD91IpVLRyXWnaACl2HMA6-bYw0xhKKNrQbhFwFhGJgYit5zX1orHwveDFotTCOOfOaiV4aRigfFnTZw4XcHKbcwhJIQaZtoecdqAYGrk/s1600/Geograph-1941525-by-Trevor-Rickard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZNYvwUsXU4XbYNg1oynLsyBZ2OKOJOfBjuaKD91IpVLRyXWnaACl2HMA6-bYw0xhKKNrQbhFwFhGJgYit5zX1orHwveDFotTCOOfOaiV4aRigfFnTZw4XcHKbcwhJIQaZtoecdqAYGrk/s320/Geograph-1941525-by-Trevor-Rickard.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Country testify of their violence. This was the
perfect environment for upwardly mobile warlords and for foreign
mercenaries, who, from the point of view of said warlords, had the
not so negligible advantage of not caring about local politics –
well, at least in theory.</span><br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">A
few mercenaries became warlord themselves, setting up petty kingdoms
– <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hengist_and_Horsa">Hengist,</a>
for instance. Others remained loyal to whatever polity they served -
it seems it was the case of Aella, who according to the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle never assumed the title of king. Ethnicity appears to have
been pretty irrelevant to the politics of the time, however. It was
mostly a mater of tribal post-roman polities fighting each other on
old grudges and of powerful individual using the chaos to become
“kings by their own hands”.</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Not
all of them were immigrants, by the way, and the early history of the
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms is replete with Welsh Kings. This was the case
of Wessex, the Kingdom which would later unify England (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerdic_of_Wessex">Cerdic</a>,
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynric_of_Wessex">Cynric</a>,
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceawlin_of_Wessex">Ceawlin</a>,
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A6dwalla_of_Wessex">Ceadwalla</a>)
and of Mercia (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pybba_of_Mercia">Pybba</a>,
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penda_of_Mercia">Penda</a>,
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pybba_of_Mercia">Peada</a>). On
the other hands, Irish and Germanic warlords ruled what would later
become Celtic kingdoms. Stuart Laycock once suggested that the
legendary Arthur was in fact a Germanic mercenary called Ear<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ð</span>here, son of another Germanic mercenary named Uthere
<i>Se non è vero è bene trovato</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
as they say in Italian.</span></span></div>
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</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_HzWghvhFf7iZTp5HiIo9x958c7LL5zXhko7TBik3Uz6wz8aoW7MbsKa_OMed-7-WZsqP1lozKQCXXeYNI1oIZKWTT7k4XaykxeWg7toLpysAmVBVvVmls1P6U_XawOKh-rOhZRxrxkQ/s1600/451px-Sutton_Hoo_helmet_reconstructed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_HzWghvhFf7iZTp5HiIo9x958c7LL5zXhko7TBik3Uz6wz8aoW7MbsKa_OMed-7-WZsqP1lozKQCXXeYNI1oIZKWTT7k4XaykxeWg7toLpysAmVBVvVmls1P6U_XawOKh-rOhZRxrxkQ/s320/451px-Sutton_Hoo_helmet_reconstructed.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">More
interesting is the case of Tewdrig ap Teithfallt. Twdrig, whose story
is related in the Book of Llandaff, was king of Glywysing, a petty
kingdom in South Wales during the sixth century. He had abdicated in
favour of his son Meurig and retired to live a hermitical life, but
came back to fight Saxon invaders. He was victorious but died </span><span style="font-style: normal;">a
short while after from his wound.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Curiously
for a Welsh saint, he had a fully Germanic name: Theodoric. So did
his father, Theodebald. Some people suggested he was a Goth, the
leader of a Visigoth fleet stranded in Britain after the fall of the
Kingdom of Tol</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ouse in 507.
Nothing proves it, or disproves it for that matter. The only thing we
can say for sure is that he was some kind of Germanic warlord, who
had set himself up as the petty king of the Cardiff region.</span></span></div>
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</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Yet
the area was not germanized – no more than the neighboring Dyfed
and Brycheinog were gaelicized </span><span style="font-style: normal;">despite
having been founded by Irish warlords. The kingdom of Glywysing
endured until </span><span style="font-style: normal;">the Norman
conquest.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
reason for that was probably that Wales had only superficially
romanized and was still a closely knit tribal society in which any
warlord had to fit </span><span style="font-style: normal;">if he
wanted to last. In the more romanized East, however, the eroded
tribal solidarity and the localized nature of the warlord’s power
meant that a culture shift could happen in a mere couple of
generation. There simply was no strong institution the native culture
could anchor itself on. Besides, the Saxons were mercenaries,
often of mixed tribal origins, which means they were quite welcoming
to any native boy able and willing to wield a sword., provided he
accepted the values of the band. That is probably what Cerdic and his likely numerous imitators did.</span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Immigrants,
even armed, powerful immigrants, are not conquering armies. They are
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">rather </span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3hqz1nW9BebqNAl_Xv3svfGMmJoJpUKrQzLcMXJV8VH-UKMMhemwN41VziYNv6YtQ1qiFXkKMDnG3oK2iw5fL11rNHymSw1hQZ-iNLrFKtQ4KH2vV1yIli9fZCPTcQVtx_SVaqCBA9A/s1600/640px-Genseric_sacking_Rome_455.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3hqz1nW9BebqNAl_Xv3svfGMmJoJpUKrQzLcMXJV8VH-UKMMhemwN41VziYNv6YtQ1qiFXkKMDnG3oK2iw5fL11rNHymSw1hQZ-iNLrFKtQ4KH2vV1yIli9fZCPTcQVtx_SVaqCBA9A/s320/640px-Genseric_sacking_Rome_455.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">destructured groups of
families and individual trying to better their lot. In a healthy
society, that means fitting in socially and culturally. Of course,
some amount of culture loyalty has to be expected in the first or
even the second generation, but <span style="font-style: normal;">on
the long run, assimilation is the norm. Tewdrig </span><span style="font-style: normal;">ap
Teithfallt </span><span style="font-style: normal;">is, of course, a
case in point.</span></span><br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In
a collapsing society, however, the best way to rise in ranks is to
use one’s community of family relationship as a leverage. This is
what the barbarian leaders of the fifth century, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricimer">Ricimer</a> for instance,</span></span> did. They tried to
use their position in tribal societies to get charges within the
imperial power structure. Of course, in such a situation, playing down
one’s ethnic or tribal ties is counterproductive.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">What
that means for us, fifteen century after the fall of the Western
Empire, is that culture shift is less dependent upon the number of
immigrants than upon the health of our society. Mass migrations are
pretty much unavoidable during the long descent which will follow
peak energy. As the USA and its vassals lose the power to prop them
up, the African and middle-eastern government dependent on them will
collapse, or at the very least lose the control of a great part of
their territory. At the same time European countries are bound will
be less and less able to stop the flow of refugees from the south.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
goal of those immigrants will not be to create some kind of Islamic
Republic, but to better their lot. Of course, this will become more
and more difficult as </span><span style="font-style: normal;">the
economy contracts and the way to power and wealth becomes narrower
and narrower for those not born in them. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">It
will result </span><span style="font-style: normal;">in immigrants
choosing unpopular careers </span><span style="font-style: normal;">(which,
in France, includes the military) </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
in sharpened competition between natives</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">and immigrants (and their
children) for low-paying jobs.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaGn456murVMBZUChBO9nPyMM31QUeAsx-0IRPSX6282X3wzpwwQ9XG01FZjo599DOxjlpUFVvtBzlb_NeoDljEiYlbkouvEHek6m4uFakQVBcuB6L0r-iD4IL-G5SabUT5T8dxDe4pAM/s1600/Hengest.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaGn456murVMBZUChBO9nPyMM31QUeAsx-0IRPSX6282X3wzpwwQ9XG01FZjo599DOxjlpUFVvtBzlb_NeoDljEiYlbkouvEHek6m4uFakQVBcuB6L0r-iD4IL-G5SabUT5T8dxDe4pAM/s320/Hengest.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Naturally,
this will feed extremism on both sides, weakening the very fabric of
the society. In fact it already does: </span><span style="font-style: normal;">we
have had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23395770">riots
near Paris</a> after the Police checked a veiled woman, probably in
not so gentle a way. Needless to say, our elites’ behavior,
combining contempt for the lower class’ concerns, self-righteous
promotion of mostly irrelevant societal issues, and ambivalent
attitude toward the immigrants’ religiosity, doesn’t help.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We
may have islamic (if not downright islamist) warlords somewhere down
the road. We may also have anti-muslim pogroms or quasi-apartheid
policy. We may even have both, depending from the time or the area,
and both would be equally disastrous from the point of view of
cultural continuity.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">Opening
w</span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">ide
the gates of immigration </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">in
this age of decline </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">is
pretty stupid –</span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
it makes the upper-middle classes feel good </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">and
lower</span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">s</span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
wages, </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">which
explains why the idea is so popular among societal leftists and
</span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>laissez-faire</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
right-wingers are so fond of this idea. </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">Now,
if you want to preserve some kind of cultural continuity –</span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
and it certainly is a worthy goal – </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">you
should better make easier for immigrants </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">and
their descendants</span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
to fit within your community. </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">Their
chances of being ultimately absorbed will be greatly improved </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">and
the skills they’ll bring will certainly help. </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">Tewdrig’s
certainly did.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkUqXotgIlB-ialcNdC1tXvRRUZZ81H_vLDRLbVK_QZAfYo6fEMCCzHqNerLo8EKHzmIr5C_6CLOY5ol3Vz2Gdz7SdXFm632PZmJQNQZ6mcOGYthdwwagaT7hK8E_QPK5wDIzps581aFI/s1600/1629379.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkUqXotgIlB-ialcNdC1tXvRRUZZ81H_vLDRLbVK_QZAfYo6fEMCCzHqNerLo8EKHzmIr5C_6CLOY5ol3Vz2Gdz7SdXFm632PZmJQNQZ6mcOGYthdwwagaT7hK8E_QPK5wDIzps581aFI/s320/1629379.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">So
next time you’ll see a</span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">n
</span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">immigrant
of north-african descent in a European street, remember King
Tewdrig... sorry, King </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">Þ</span></span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">eodoreiks
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">Þ</span></span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">eobaldsunus,
in the </span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">hills
of Glamorgan, defending, sword in hand, his welsh fellow countrymen
against the Saxon hordes.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And
while you are at it remember that the leader of those Saxon hordes
may very well have been a native.</span></div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-31553975612421790372013-06-06T07:03:00.000-07:002013-06-06T07:03:41.805-07:00Corruption and privileges<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbsv8T70l66WfVgwsrAwQYTrBRFv3HCAkFhCKGy2YkY0Z0Sf7pf0_x_8O09FQBBlQSAPBhzLl_C6IytD77HewX9GGodTcrfaDv5J31h4lHD63alPhN_xg8gcoF63jyFMN7uU9nEX2BGas/s1600/272-1934-01-11.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbsv8T70l66WfVgwsrAwQYTrBRFv3HCAkFhCKGy2YkY0Z0Sf7pf0_x_8O09FQBBlQSAPBhzLl_C6IytD77HewX9GGodTcrfaDv5J31h4lHD63alPhN_xg8gcoF63jyFMN7uU9nEX2BGas/s320/272-1934-01-11.jpg" width="241" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span>J</span>ust
before tearing itself apart about whether gay people should be
allowed to marry, France has gone through another political financial
scandal. This is not an uncommon occurrence. We tend not to care very
much about our politicians cheating on their wife, or even, like one
of our former president, having two families complete with a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazarine_Pingeot">hidden
daughter</a>. We tend to be less tolerant with embezzlement and tax
fraud, which does not keep them from happening with a troubling
regularity</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In
this particular case it was Jerome Cahuzac a socialist minister, in
charge of the budget, who discovered to have a secret account in a
Swiss bank, for tax fraud purpose. Jerome Cahuzac being the political
head of French IRS, it was, let’s say, embarrassing. Of course,
Jerome Cahuzac was <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>advised<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>
to resign, both as a minister and a Member of Parlement. After
another round of <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>advices<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>,
he has finally decided not to run in the coming by-election in what
used to be his constituency.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Politics
being what it is, the affair prompted a round of half-hearted
reforms, with ministers forced to disclose their fortune, then faded
out of the headlines in the wake of the gay marriage controversy.
This, however, only a matter of time before another scandal surfaces.
As I have said, those scandals are relatively common in French
history and Frenchmen somewhat expect their politicians to use their
position to get, if not rich, at least wealthy.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkKSElkJFiZjeLmEmMZfEeCRHe0YOFt6VDofk1izeT1jxyDJfHHl1EgocHAh_-dU3IPn4hSNSeNfws7okHcBtD9bUa6nSwfCQ6cvdqFRCgYVUKQhl5_7K7fnnJKz623MFTTjCiv-dKgJY/s1600/cahuzac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkKSElkJFiZjeLmEmMZfEeCRHe0YOFt6VDofk1izeT1jxyDJfHHl1EgocHAh_-dU3IPn4hSNSeNfws7okHcBtD9bUa6nSwfCQ6cvdqFRCgYVUKQhl5_7K7fnnJKz623MFTTjCiv-dKgJY/s320/cahuzac.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">When
the regime is weak, however, or when the country goes trough a
crisis, this can lead to drastic changes in government. I don’t
think this will be the case, directly, for the Cahuzac affair, but
the general climate it breeds certainly will pave the way for it.
There are, indeed, certainly precedents for this in French history.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
first to come to my mind is, of course, the Affair of the Diamond
Necklace, which prepared the French Revolution. In 1772, Louis XV had
ordered for his mistress, <i>Madame du Barry</i>, a diamond necklace
costing some 2,000,000 livres – a huge amount of money, even for a
king. Louis XV, however, died before the necklace could be completed
and <i>Madame du Barry </i><span style="font-style: normal;">was
banished from the court, so the jeweler found themselves with a
hugely expansive jewel on their hand and nobody to sell it to, the
new queen having refused to accept a necklace designed for a
courtesan.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJRo3ZvTy7xRxq7FdtbZXTTahRRKoJjC0KSjk2WvEI7SDFoiHIzWj4h3GVDuzwVT534jP1LW_EJ4fPQm1x1Hv8IiMwgHgcwYWsZuB3RZqs22-Ja2ajZSnwWmpsLCQiwjHvxP0XEaRdX-4/s1600/332px-Collier_reine_Breteuil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJRo3ZvTy7xRxq7FdtbZXTTahRRKoJjC0KSjk2WvEI7SDFoiHIzWj4h3GVDuzwVT534jP1LW_EJ4fPQm1x1Hv8IiMwgHgcwYWsZuB3RZqs22-Ja2ajZSnwWmpsLCQiwjHvxP0XEaRdX-4/s320/332px-Collier_reine_Breteuil.jpg" width="221" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In
the meantime, a con-artist, Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, "Comtesse
de la Motte”, manipulated her lover, Louis René Édouard de Rohan
known as Cardinal de Rohan into believing the queen was in love with
him and arranged a meeting between him and </span><strike><span style="font-style: normal;">the
said queen</span></strike><span style="font-style: normal;"> a
prostitute passing off as a queen. She then “borrowed” a lot of
money from the Cardinal, and bought her way into the high society.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">She
was then contacted by the jewelers who wanted to use her to sell
their necklace. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">She accepted
and told the Cardinal that Marie Antoinette wanted to buy the
necklace; but, wanted him to act as a secret intermediary... this
worked well, until the Cardinal failed to paid the agreed upon amount
and the jewelers complained to the queen about him. Let’s say Marie
Antoinette was not amused.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Jeanne
de la Motte was condemned to be whipped and branded then sent to life
imprisonment in the Salpêtrière. She escaped, however and fled to
London where she ublished a book entitled </span><i>Memoires
Justificatifs de La Comtesse de Valois de La Motte</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
which attempted to justify her actions while casting blame upon the
queen. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">the Cardinal de Rohan,
for one, was acquitted.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">A
lot of people where convinced the Queen had indeed a hand into the
whole affair and had used </span><i>La Motte</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
as an instrument to discredit the Cardinal de Rohan. Rohan’s
acquittal, of course, did not help and the queen’s approval rating
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">plummeted</span><span style="font-style: normal;">,
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">with the consequences we all
know.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ9Nti1wqvNr-DmCmXL8JL9q1a-JWOeg0PIx_tgKHQY45CgJWTvilZhVHp5Ys8grYiCyYhMm_x4YDV3_RnFP8XGwhrs_NV6dxHSB-X82JX-U2ulyBsRg9qXZMSV6_87jSuv7UapC4-uUk/s1600/221675416.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ9Nti1wqvNr-DmCmXL8JL9q1a-JWOeg0PIx_tgKHQY45CgJWTvilZhVHp5Ys8grYiCyYhMm_x4YDV3_RnFP8XGwhrs_NV6dxHSB-X82JX-U2ulyBsRg9qXZMSV6_87jSuv7UapC4-uUk/s320/221675416.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Another,
less known, example is the Stavisky affair in 1934. Alexandre
Satvisky was a French con-artist </span><span style="font-style: normal;">who
had managed to put himself at the head of the municipal pawnshop of
Bayonne. He used his position to sell worthless bonds, with fake
emeralds as a surety. He used his political connections to avoid
trial and continued his scams until December, when, faced with
exposure, he fled. The police finally found him, mortally wounded, in
January in Chamonix. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">He
apparently had committed suicide, albeit in a bizarre way since the
bullet had traveled an inconvenient three meters before hitting his
head.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">He
had an extra-long arm, you see.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
affair finally went public and grew into a full-blown scandal,
leading to the resignation of premier Camille Chautemps from the
Radical-Socialist Party (which was neither radical nor socialist, by
the way). His successor Édouard Daladier, dismissed the prefect of
the Paris police, more to the right than Atilla the Hun Jean Chiappe.
The result was a violent demonstration which degenerated into a coup
attempt by various far right organizations such as the Action
Française, the Croix-de-Feu and the Mouvement Franciste. Fourteen
people were killed in the night of 6–7 February 1934. The Republic
survived, barely, but but Daladier had to resign and the left faced
with a</span><span style="font-style: normal;">n</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
immediate threat from the far right </span><span style="font-style: normal;">united,
which led to the 1936 victory of the Popular Front.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6dLPYfH6HiPaUQS0IhlvXbCZdmCGmm0o_tS27xAxUF49-O6lqim24VkJC4F0Ddfa8LtGx2zNN-uIdTluZwXA6iL-_qFwY7i-FPSSuGom59eS1HCmCuQNZAJ0JsxUDroEpyvoWu6OkaRk/s1600/Concorde1934.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6dLPYfH6HiPaUQS0IhlvXbCZdmCGmm0o_tS27xAxUF49-O6lqim24VkJC4F0Ddfa8LtGx2zNN-uIdTluZwXA6iL-_qFwY7i-FPSSuGom59eS1HCmCuQNZAJ0JsxUDroEpyvoWu6OkaRk/s320/Concorde1934.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
Stavisky affair also triggered the founding of a far right terrorist
organization </span><i>La Cagoule</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
an a general erosion of democratic values which would pave the way
for the Vichy regime.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Of
course, nobody has tried to storm the parliament in the wake of the
Cahuzac affair. Its effects are more insidious but can be every bit
as deleterious.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">France
is indeed facing a two-pronged long-term crisis which is slowly but
surely destroying its social cohesiveness. Like all human societies,
it suffers from the systemic effects of peak energy and peak
complexity. </span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">As
the amount of net energy available to the society shrinks, it becomes
less and less able to both maintain its infrastructure and actually
do things. The result is that our infrastructures, both material and
immaterial, decay, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">as does
our ability to effect positive change. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Besides,
our usual ways of dealing with problems, that is increasing the
complexity of the society, is becoming more and more
counterproductive.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">As
always, in such a situation, the top tiers of the society, preserve
their position </span><span style="font-style: normal;">by grabbing
resources from </span><span style="font-style: normal;">those located
lower in the hierarchy. In democ</span><span style="font-style: normal;">racies</span><span style="font-style: normal;">,
this mostly done in indirect ways, by dismantling institutions </span><span style="font-style: normal;">which
benefit mostly the lower and middle strata of society: </span><span style="font-style: normal;">welfare,
public education and services, collective transportation, subsidized
medicine...</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Moreover,
we are slowly losing our privileged position as a first circle ally
of the current world hegemon. Not only are the United States losing
ground to China, but the center of world economic activities is
drifting away from </span><span style="font-style: normal;">the
Atlantic, making us more and more peripheral in world affairs. That
means that our ability to profit from the imperial system set up by
the USA (and from the remnants of our own Empire) is slowly
dwindling.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4IBIeuVos8_nmORS4olMhKa8_CP6zc1BM5xAgDvngW1qjn6yky1IYvavSZQPPeikfmF4VNdi83jd-CbVJfXipiMrz2EV6zfeQDyybvuql0_s3p6_mIXoTwgCkNaV3w77wJ0nlFcqEP70/s1600/index.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4IBIeuVos8_nmORS4olMhKa8_CP6zc1BM5xAgDvngW1qjn6yky1IYvavSZQPPeikfmF4VNdi83jd-CbVJfXipiMrz2EV6zfeQDyybvuql0_s3p6_mIXoTwgCkNaV3w77wJ0nlFcqEP70/s1600/index.jpg" /></a>In
such a situation, elections become more and more about gay marriage
and the legalization of marijuana and less and less about wages and
taxes. Mainstream politics sound then more and more like empty noises
to the working class and to </span><span style="font-style: normal;">a
significant part of the middle class.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
creates a disconnect between the population and the political class
which grows more and more parasitical as the resources of the society
diminish. This disconnect is bound to increase as various elites are
forced into resource grabbing by the shrinking economy and
competition between the various strata of the society sharpens.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In
normal times, scandals, even though they can end the career of the
politicians involved in them, do not undermine the legitimacy of the
regime. Neither the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_scandals">Panama
Scandals</a> nor the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oil_Sniffer_Hoax">Oil
Sniffers Hoax</a> or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urba_affair">Urba
Affair</a> threatened the survival of the Republic because, outside
far right circles, they were seen as bugs, not as features. Globally,
the system worked, and even if you disagreed with the party in power,
you could hope for things to get done your way once your pet team in
the government.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4IBIeuVos8_nmORS4olMhKa8_CP6zc1BM5xAgDvngW1qjn6yky1IYvavSZQPPeikfmF4VNdi83jd-CbVJfXipiMrz2EV6zfeQDyybvuql0_s3p6_mIXoTwgCkNaV3w77wJ0nlFcqEP70/s1600/index.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
problem is that it does not longer work that way. Our economies
cannot function without a solid growth, which is more and more
becoming a thing of the past. As the governments lack the means to do
anything but further the <i>status quo</i>, the policies of the left
become indistinguishable from those of the right and their ideology
focus away on societal issues to preserve the fake dichotomy so
central in our political system.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVQ8Vcricgi1JHfUIHB2vnbKD3jKeEXQHbhvtk6jgaOn_Z2zSz1Ce7pBLKgn6bZjB-xqPZ206Lt6R8CG9Lb0M7kdTJ3XuDJm7P0G5JGHyc9oeTm-0zZgCzrspz3oKv6-J2K6cE5o5S5rQ/s1600/quilsenaillentous.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVQ8Vcricgi1JHfUIHB2vnbKD3jKeEXQHbhvtk6jgaOn_Z2zSz1Ce7pBLKgn6bZjB-xqPZ206Lt6R8CG9Lb0M7kdTJ3XuDJm7P0G5JGHyc9oeTm-0zZgCzrspz3oKv6-J2K6cE5o5S5rQ/s320/quilsenaillentous.jpg" width="197" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Of
course, people are not fooled and see more and more their political
class not as the promoters of such or such policies but as
professionals fighting to advance their career. It becomes, by the
way, more and more true, as the younger generation of politicians
internalize the constraints of the system and focus on secondary,
bobo, issues such as feminism or voting right for foreigners.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In
such a situation, careerism, greed, and ultimately corruption become
features of a political system more and more cut off from the
day-to-day realities. Outright fraud remains rare, but privileges
abound. I certainly enjoy some of them despite my low status and my
position as an outsider, even though the main one – I can’t be
fired – come not from my being a politician but from being a civil
servant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
occasional scandal will then be considered by a large part of the
population as the proof that the whole political class is corrupt and
that only extremists are sincere. In 1780, that ultimately meant the
Jacobins. In 1934, that meant the Communists or the various far right
sects which would later founded the Vichy regime. Now, it meant
caesarist parties such as the French National Front or Populist /
leftist ones such as Mélenchon’s Parti de Gauche.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCViIu8wz8FuMeKiMNyQ_yAm9UhC-Up0Sg_CH7NfP9rR1KYF_EYJMZ8VjpzRFTREZv4avQXdraj8AHACCBZE0yfoxWPuq8UfvGcEMDodnj0tZLA0Athmf1k1hBkSi3iTOnM3k3fhLAHjU/s1600/6828730.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCViIu8wz8FuMeKiMNyQ_yAm9UhC-Up0Sg_CH7NfP9rR1KYF_EYJMZ8VjpzRFTREZv4avQXdraj8AHACCBZE0yfoxWPuq8UfvGcEMDodnj0tZLA0Athmf1k1hBkSi3iTOnM3k3fhLAHjU/s320/6828730.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">That
makes corruption far more dangerous than in more prosperous times as
it increase the already strong preference of our declining societies
for authoritarianism. Fueled by an ever growing thirst for an
effective political action, but similarly lacking in means, this
authoritarianism won’t be less corrupt than its democratic rivals.
In fact, it may be more, despite a few show-trials, because of a
greater control of judicial institutions by the government –
corruption-ridden China is a case in point. It will also be less
efficient at mobilizing remaining resources since its legitimacy will
be based not on its origin but on its supposed ability to solve the
problems faced by the society, something it will be very unlikely to
be be able to do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">What
authoritarianism will do, however, is destroy what will be left of
the democratic tradition and replace it with a mythology of
charismatic leadership which will pave the way for warlords later in
the game. This can be disastrous. Democracy as an idea is probably
going to survive or at least to be revived at some point, unless we
lose writing, which is quite unlikely. Democratic tradition at the
local level, however, with the network of associations and local
institutions it depends, would be shattered by a period of brutal
authoritarianism.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVQ8Vcricgi1JHfUIHB2vnbKD3jKeEXQHbhvtk6jgaOn_Z2zSz1Ce7pBLKgn6bZjB-xqPZ206Lt6R8CG9Lb0M7kdTJ3XuDJm7P0G5JGHyc9oeTm-0zZgCzrspz3oKv6-J2K6cE5o5S5rQ/s1600/quilsenaillentous.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
is why it is vital for the future to eliminate corruption as much as
possible, and to reduce, as much as possible again, the privileges of
the political class. It’s not because they are bad - they are, but
it is inevitable that the political class grabs some privilege and
that some of its members go over to the dark side : that’s what
human do. It’s because they reinforce a trend already strong in all
declining societies which leads to runaway resource grabbing by
self-appointed elites which would make the present political class
almost competent and responsible in comparison.</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We
need to go robespierrian on corruption, lest a new Robespierre shows
up.</span></div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-6451888494057372792013-05-10T06:38:00.001-07:002013-05-10T06:38:53.486-07:00Notre-Dame-des-Landes and the risks of activism
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMJq7p1Lt4-05_hHOAW58F8LJReRvzM1AxnNK-44VFEz9jxSH8fMWvvRfcM82uVLy9LwspHiNyNUrRL23XTLJ9zT_hZVx_APIdFPam-M9zX5AVCO6wMHPyDQjdK0TWdMyOF-V22cBYvn4/s1600/W0125-NDdL_ZaD_ChicaneD281_56876.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMJq7p1Lt4-05_hHOAW58F8LJReRvzM1AxnNK-44VFEz9jxSH8fMWvvRfcM82uVLy9LwspHiNyNUrRL23XTLJ9zT_hZVx_APIdFPam-M9zX5AVCO6wMHPyDQjdK0TWdMyOF-V22cBYvn4/s320/W0125-NDdL_ZaD_ChicaneD281_56876.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Even
if it is hardly a priority, I suspect that a significant minority of
my readers have heard about the Notre-Dame-des-Landes question. For
those who haven’t, I will summarize it. Notre-Dame-des-Landes (<i>Our
Lady of the Moors</i> in English) is a rather unremarkable village in
the southern Breton countryside, which happens to have been chosen as
the location of a future airport. Locals have predictably been upset
about that choice and saying that the project has met with some
resistance is the mother of all understatements. Things have turned
even more messy when Jean-Marc Ayrault, mayor of nearby Nantes, has
been appointed as Prime Minister of France with clashes between
protesters and the anti-riot police making the headlines of the
national papers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
atmosphere has somewhat cooled down, but the project is still highly
controversial, with a lot of people investing a lot of mythology in
it. Of course, the promoters of the project live in a world which
already no longer exists. Building a new airport while oil production
has been stagnant for nearly a decade is patently absurd and only the
prevalence of the mythology of progress in our society makes possible
for this weird idea to be still defended.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Yet
the opponents have their own set of issues, which are actually
causing the support for them to erode. As always in such cases, the
core of the opponents to the project are locals, with mostly local
issues. Those can greatly vary. In some cases it is pure
unadulterated not-in-my-backyard-ism, in others it is peasants
clinging to their lands or villagers unwilling to abandon their rural
lifestyle. Many elected officials refuse a project which will
strengthen the already strong influence of nearby Nantes over the
area and favor a distributed network of mid-sized cities over the
center-periphery model so characteristic of French geography.</span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">These
reasons are perfectly legitimate, including the
not-in-my-backyard-ism. The whole point of local democracy is after
all to provide peripheries with the wherewithal to defend their
interests. This is, for instance, what happened in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plogoff">Plogoff</a>
at the very end of the seventies.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJpBIPVs3KTbJMOtyF4GfDE6WOowogG2_O046QhlfM6JjrKr5owDeIsITjgvFtdgfofp0bS53DhDpqbVPl3_vkrUmxt2iIzp3UkQ7BjtRLcZ6HtBhv1AM1-YotseyV1ng3owLP-Fg_zLA/s1600/Plogoff.NONO.01.red-8e08f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJpBIPVs3KTbJMOtyF4GfDE6WOowogG2_O046QhlfM6JjrKr5owDeIsITjgvFtdgfofp0bS53DhDpqbVPl3_vkrUmxt2iIzp3UkQ7BjtRLcZ6HtBhv1AM1-YotseyV1ng3owLP-Fg_zLA/s320/Plogoff.NONO.01.red-8e08f.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
village had been chosen as the site of a nuclear plan – a public
interest project according to the state and to the <a href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_de_Plogoff">departmental
council</a>. Locals were not exactly enthusiastic, and protested with
the help of ant-nuclear activist from all over Brittany. It was ,in
many ways, the defining fight of a generation, and local mayors and
councilors were at the forefront of it. This is probably why the
struggle to keep the <i>Baie des Trépassés</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">plutonium-free </span><span style="font-style: normal;">was
not highjacked by ambitious would-be ministers or militant
professional revolutionists. This is also why when François
Mitterand won the 1981 presidential election, he swiftly canceled the
project.</span></span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Unfortunately,
the fight against the airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes is unlikely to
go the same way. Even if the project is canceled after the
resignation of Jean-Marc Ayrault as a prime minister (probably in
2014, after municipal elections which are likely to go badly for the
conventional left), it will left a bitter aftertaste in many people’s
mouth, and not only its promoters’.</span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">France
uses a two rounds voting system, even in elections with multiple
winners, so smaller left parties have a strong incentive to ally with
the dominant socialist party if they want to have elected officials.
The Greens are no exception, but in the context of the
Notre-Dame-des-Landes area, they also they also need to push the
fires of contest to gather votes and support. The result has been
rather schizophrenic. The Greens sit in every executive body
supporting the project, from lowly municipal councils to the
Government of France while vocally opposing it in the field. Of
course, except for a few local mavericks, they will never vote
against socialist candidates, and of course, their ministers won’t
resign from the government.</span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
most likely response in such a situation is noisy tokenism.
Politicians tend to love tokenism as it is a cheap way to get votes,
at least for a time. Greens are more vulnerable to this temptation
since they are basically a revitalization movement, the whole point
of which is to perform symbolic acts so as to turn our society into a
sustainable one without having to pay the price for it.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAKwZCyngThzXx3n9l6itLmAwOBxsLJLqXb01jAQG52kmXlM1FUzuKNf-sTdHu2urVkGZuZgRfmFan3m7ZXsJLZjMMSYmN_deda9Dm60KqD0Lht0-Xkf4Pj0b66KmvXiDHEXW1Daf95RQ/s1600/320px-Daniel_Cohn-Bendit_Europe_Ecologie_2009-06-03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAKwZCyngThzXx3n9l6itLmAwOBxsLJLqXb01jAQG52kmXlM1FUzuKNf-sTdHu2urVkGZuZgRfmFan3m7ZXsJLZjMMSYmN_deda9Dm60KqD0Lht0-Xkf4Pj0b66KmvXiDHEXW1Daf95RQ/s320/320px-Daniel_Cohn-Bendit_Europe_Ecologie_2009-06-03.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Of
course, abandoning one’s core values for a few seats in a
government or a municipal council has also a price. It tends to breed
distrust. In France this process is already fairly well advanced, to
the point that Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a leading figure in French
political ecology and Member of the European Parliament could
recently write : </span>
</div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.74cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>We exist in the Senate, in the
Parliament and in the Government but no longer in the society at
large. Our institutional successes are not associated with a dynamic
among citizens, quite the contrary. Our image has become detestable.
We have failed where we wanted to restore hope by doing politics
another way. Today we embody the unbearable lightness of arrivism
[...] When we see her in a documentary film, brandishing her pen and
swearing she will never sign an agreement with the PS if it does not
include the abandonment of nuclear power, then, of course, we sign it
because it is a good agreement, it is devastating.</i> </span>
</div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I
might add it is also devastating for whatever cause they defend, even
if they are sincere.</span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Radicals
are another problem. There is nothing wrong with radicalism <i>per
se. </i>I am quite radical in many ways and one can argue that the
true radicals are the defenders of the <i>status quo</i> since their
stated ambition is to go against the most basic laws of the universe.</span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There
is however a difference between being a radical and being obnoxious,
and this line has been crossed many times in Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
Fitting in, being a good neighbor is a big part of preaching by
example. It is not ego-flattering, however. Being right against the
rest of the world is quite a pleasure and I certainly did indulge in
it at some point of my existence. It is a good way to alienate
potential, or even actual, support, however, as nobody enjoys being
at the receiving end of in your face self-righteousness.</span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
is why so many radical movements, from feminism to atheism,
accumulated such an embarrassing surplus of bad press despite what
they claim to be their basic tenets having becoming mainstream.</span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
is also why there is a widening rift between the local opponents to
the Notre-Dame-des-Landes poject and those who have come from
elsewhere to “help” them. Those activists have come from all over
France, and even, albeit in smaller numbers from abroad, to occupy
the area where the airport is scheduled to be built.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">They
have had some success, and their clashes with the police earned them
a significant amount of media time. They have, however, failed to
integrate within the local community, as, I must say, was to be
expected.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
<i>zadistes</i>, as they are called here, are radicals living in the
margins of society, with mostly an anarchist background and a
relatively high level of education. They certainly have to be lauded
for putting their mouth where their money is. Beside clashing with
the police, they have created a kind of communal counter-society with
“non-hierarchical decision-making processes”. It tend to be
skeptical of these. Private property has bad press, at least among
left-winger, but in really hard times, it is an insurance against
starvation and homelessness. As for “non-hierarchical
decision-making processes”, well, we are pack hunters and hierarchy
is a part of our genetic heritage. We can and must tame it, but
trying to suppress it entirely is as efficient – and dangerous –
as denying the existence of the panther which has just sneaked inside
you bedroom.</span></div>
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</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">That’s
not the problem, however. The problem is that setting this
micro-counter-society put them at odd with the locals who don’t
intend to share their house with anybody but family and think that
sitting in a district committee is a lousy way of spending an
evening.</span></div>
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There
is nothing wrong with living apart from the main body of society.
Buddhist and Christian</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> monks have done that for a very long time.
These, however, don’t want to reform society, and while they may
consider the lifestyle of the majority to be somewhat inferior, they
don’t deny its legitimacy.</span><br />
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<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
<i>zadistes</i> themselves are here to fight “capitalism” (which
has become pretty much a snarl world in the French radical left, by
the way), and that means <i>ipso facto</i>, denying the legitimacy of
the values of the community around them. This has led to weird
incidents, such as when <i>zadistes</i> decided to cut barbed wires
around locals’ meadows... because of their symbolic values.
Needless to say, said locals were not amused. There are also stories
of reprisals against those who, to quote Brecht, “don’t take part
to the struggle” and notably to its financing.</span></div>
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</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdcVXtmULFBhE4cp6GURf_YbRKogpfT5LP4LxvRfzx41_33Mf5ec3hGL11sEPHJNXuyHH5PV02f92LUpPQxQD9IWpEit1oUDAFGsmI3ajrYWnvCQgaS1VA6b5kp1P78fafn2sfh4a47eM/s1600/Tracto-velo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdcVXtmULFBhE4cp6GURf_YbRKogpfT5LP4LxvRfzx41_33Mf5ec3hGL11sEPHJNXuyHH5PV02f92LUpPQxQD9IWpEit1oUDAFGsmI3ajrYWnvCQgaS1VA6b5kp1P78fafn2sfh4a47eM/s320/Tracto-velo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">More
important, this breeds an hollier than thou attitude which
unfortunately runs rampant in radical organizations. This is an easy
to fall in trap. After all, setting oneself as a member of a kind of
vanguard ideological elite, miles ahead of the crowd, preparing the
shape of thing to come and / or fighting against all odd a corporate
behemoth or another, is quite a temptation, especially if you are a
small minority in the general population. Feminists, marxists, local
nationalists, radical right wingers have all given into it, so it is
no wonder that radical environmentalism has done it too.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It
is, however, a self-defeating attitude. Of course, it won’t make
opponents to the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport become its staunch
supporters, albeit it may sway a few undecided people the wrong way,
but it will make your cause more unpopular than there is any need
for. The struggle against the airport may or may not be won, but
unless you believe, as some do, that the Notre-Dame-des-Landes
airport not being built will induce some paradigm shift, bring
“Capitalism” to its knees and magically provides us with a
sustainable society, you’ll agree that the decline of the
industrial civilization will continue unabated.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In
fact, one can argue that whether the airport is built or not is
pretty much irrelevant to the fate of the area. In hundred years from
now it will be a forest ruin locals will search for scrap metal. In a
region which will at least partially flooded by the rising sea and
lies downstream from a couple of nuclear plants, it probably won’t
matter on the long run.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">What
will matter is whether we will be able to soften the coming long
descent, among other things, by preserving survival techniques and by
teaching them to those who will need them when the really hard times
will come. This won’t be possible without trust. This trust can be
achieved many ways, depending from the local culture. I am pretty
sure however that instrumentalizing local struggle to grab political
power or public subsidies is not conductive to that, and neither is
insulating oneself in an self-righteous ivory tower.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We
are social animals and pursuing our goals outside the community won’t
get us anywhere.</span></div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-11377950298947035502013-04-19T01:10:00.002-07:002013-04-19T01:11:44.299-07:00In memory of the Bank of Saint-George<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 6pt; }</style>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRckMIBOyzLf0w9unUiGsK6c-Bsg9OQLOQmmywPUxoeYfHh0Tu-ayraCYVvcKlQk8KNAdsg3ziTciNPS4YWaNhKGYKQUjmoL0xOx1Ojdvbn_Yf-f_Tp1QZYAzl6cLWohRXvnJD-yK2_fE/s1600/Palazzo_San_Georgio_Genova_W.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRckMIBOyzLf0w9unUiGsK6c-Bsg9OQLOQmmywPUxoeYfHh0Tu-ayraCYVvcKlQk8KNAdsg3ziTciNPS4YWaNhKGYKQUjmoL0xOx1Ojdvbn_Yf-f_Tp1QZYAzl6cLWohRXvnJD-yK2_fE/s320/Palazzo_San_Georgio_Genova_W.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There
have been a lot of talks about banks lately in France, both because
of the Cypriot debacle and because the minister in charge of the
French IRS has been caught red-handed hiding a substantial amount of
money in some Swiss bank. This has given renewed impetus to the
fight against tax heavens and bank secrecy – which is indeed a good
thing – and a renewed credibility to the many narratives, which
present banks as some kind of vampires’ conspiracy bent on sucking
all the world’s economies dry.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Those
narratives are old and, as often happens, they were promoted by the
far right – and notably the Larouchies – before being adopted by
a part of the left, and, of course, they are totally wrong.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">While
banks have some leverage and can influence governments int adopting
measures favorable to them, but so does the entertainment industry,
or the Unions. More important, this leverage, like any power center’s
in our societies, is highly dependent upon the continuity of the
system. Should it collapse, or change in a sufficiently dramatic way,
banks, and more generally, the finance industry, would lose their
power nearly overnight, as the (not so) sad story of the Bank of
Saint-George shows.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
<i>Casa delle compere e dei banchi di San Giorgio</i> was founded in
1407 by a number of Genoese oligarchs, among whom the Grimaldi and
Serra families (yes, those Grimaldis). The Republic of Genoa was a merchant republic, under
the control of a handful of noble and trading families. It had
been a major power in the Western Mediterranean during the crusade
era but had lost most of its positions to Venice, then to the nascent
Ottoman Empire, and was progressively becoming a French and Milanese
protectorate.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdNee1_pgX5ZxsFakXA9HFtZyjDcqguOLKb3ohbHYuJbfx6RnNGAlDRk59JX0TjGHi3XeBl0rJIrcxawPbubWXP1Ei6A48hqeXle05QY_SD4xZ1Z6wR7tspPcXd47iouheqayzlgYpppU/s1600/Genoese_fortress_in_Sudak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="90" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdNee1_pgX5ZxsFakXA9HFtZyjDcqguOLKb3ohbHYuJbfx6RnNGAlDRk59JX0TjGHi3XeBl0rJIrcxawPbubWXP1Ei6A48hqeXle05QY_SD4xZ1Z6wR7tspPcXd47iouheqayzlgYpppU/s320/Genoese_fortress_in_Sudak.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As
the Republic became feebler and feebler, the Bank acquired greater
and greater power For a time several Genoese provinces – notably
Corsica and Southern Crimea – were even ruled directly by the Bank
– the strapped for cash republican government had simply pawned
them. The bank’s influence was such that Niccolo Machiavel could
write : </span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 42pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">On
the other hand, as the city had at first conceded the customs, she
next began to assign towns, castles, or territories, as security for
moneys received; and this practice has proceeded to such a length,
from the necessities of the state, and the accommodation by the San
Giorgio, that the latter now has under its administration most of the
towns and cities in the Genoese dominion. These the Bank governs and
protects, and every year sends its deputies, appointed by vote,
without any interference on the part of the republic. Hence the
affections of the citizens are transferred from the government to the
San Giorgio, on account of the tyranny of the former, and the
excellent regulations adopted by the latter. Hence also originate the
frequent changes of the republic, which is sometimes under a citizen,
and at other times governed by a stranger; for the magistracy, and
not the San Giorgio, changes the government. So when the Fregosi and
the Adorni were in opposition, as the government of the republic was
the prize for which they strove, the greater part of the citizens
withdrew and left it to the victor. The only interference of the Bank
of St. Giorgio is when one party has obtained a superiority over the
other, to bind the victor to the observance of its laws, which up to
this time have not been changed; for as it possesses arms, money, and
influence, they could not be altered without incurring the imminent
risk of a dangerous rebellion. This establishment presents an
instance of what in all the republics, either described or imagined
by philosophers, has never been thought of; exhibiting within the
same community, and among the same citizens, liberty and tyranny,
integrity and corruption, justice and injustice; for this
establishment preserves in the city many ancient and venerable
customs; and should it happen (as in time it easily may) that the San
Giorgio should have possession of the whole city, the republic will
become more distinguished than that of Venice.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 42pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
1528 the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V allied with Genoese Admiral
Andrea Doria and ousted the French, restoring the independence of the
Republic under Spanish protection. The Bank began then to finance the
Spanish monarchy, acquiring considerable influence in the process.
Spain, ruled by the Hapsburg, had become very wealthy from the
pillaging of the Inca and Aztec Empire. American gold and silver had,
however, to be transported across the Atlantic to be of any use – a
lengthy and dangerous process, which pirates and privateers soon made
yet more lengthy and dangerous.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilCbkwvO1m-GJMA8C3vzJf1Vw2KgH9A8u2gE5JUwjU_dN7UjHsKyXgRpvyl8jv44blj-HDFG1YQdznRV0Z6Wivyc0R4HQ2UAEy7ihBjo0mlw75iT2itNlNGrrBdxwfuiEN2KKQegpX5IU/s1600/Ambrogio_Spinola_(Michiel_Jansz_van_Mierevelt,_1633).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilCbkwvO1m-GJMA8C3vzJf1Vw2KgH9A8u2gE5JUwjU_dN7UjHsKyXgRpvyl8jv44blj-HDFG1YQdznRV0Z6Wivyc0R4HQ2UAEy7ihBjo0mlw75iT2itNlNGrrBdxwfuiEN2KKQegpX5IU/s320/Ambrogio_Spinola_(Michiel_Jansz_van_Mierevelt,_1633).jpg" width="257" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
Genoese bankers provided therefore the Habsburgs with fluid credit
and a dependably regular income. In return, they took the lion’s
share of American silver and accumulated, quite predictably, an
indecent amount of money in the process.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
Bank used this money to invest in colonial ventures, competing with
Dutch East India Company and the English East India Company, and was a
major player in European economy up to the end of the XVIII<sup>th</sup>
century despite the decline of Spain... then evaporated overnight.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Genoa
happened indeed to lie uncomfortably close to revolutionary France.
It was invaded in 1797 by a French general called Napoleon Bonaparte.
Bonaparte turned Genoa into a French client, the Ligurian Republic.
In 1805, the same Bonaparte, who had become an emperor in the
meantime, annexed the area.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bonaparte
had also created what would become the Bank of France in Paris, and
given it a monopoly on money printing. The idea was to create a
stable currency and a reliable source of cash for France’s foreign
ventures. Bonaparte happened to be a major shareholder and, being
practically-minded, he quickly understood that concurrence was bad
for business – his own anyway. The Bank of Saint-George was
therefore told, politely but firmly, to please cease operations as soon as
possible, which it did – French emperors tend to be very
convincing, especially when their words are backed by an indecent
number of infantry divisions.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvxk0JO8O_eLoeoUKd7y4ROhjMt8qT1qb2LQ4o_6QZCX1uFQARWl3DJeChoC3_qkkPH7HUYoR-DhsXLaE5FrymvLov7jeVsjQ9R88LlYvXkvSi_28AFMS6pE4AtgdfEXDI6verEZboYHg/s1600/640px-Charles_Meynier_-_Napoleon_in_Berlin.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvxk0JO8O_eLoeoUKd7y4ROhjMt8qT1qb2LQ4o_6QZCX1uFQARWl3DJeChoC3_qkkPH7HUYoR-DhsXLaE5FrymvLov7jeVsjQ9R88LlYvXkvSi_28AFMS6pE4AtgdfEXDI6verEZboYHg/s320/640px-Charles_Meynier_-_Napoleon_in_Berlin.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
was not, however, French military power that enabled Napoleon the
First to annex Genoa and dissolve the Bank of Saint-George, but the
fact he was not a traditional monarch and was not bound by the traditional
rules of statesmanship. The problem, indeed, with owing one’s
throne to tradition, was that you had to obey traditional laws, lest
you undermine your own legitimacy. The French kings could boast as
much as they wanted about being the State, their actual power was
fairly limited. They couldn’t, for instance, raise new taxes
without the assent of the <i>États Géneraux</i>.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Napoleon,
on the other hand, was the heir of a violent revolution. He based his
power on military force, but also upon a variant of the enlightenment
which emphasized equality<span style="font-size: small;">,</span> rationality and national sovereignty –
albeit not freedom of the press and electoral democracy. It was not
founded on tradition and therefore was not bound by it. Of course,
that also meant he was not protected by it either and could be only
as strong as his last victory.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Our
situation is, <i>mutatis mutandis</i>, similar to the <i>ancien régime</i>
kings. Even though we are theoretically in position to severely
restrict or control the activities of the banking industry, or of any
other sector of the economy, we are, in fact prevented to do so by a
corset of self-imposed rules.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjMJQMF3gEq6xQ-TSJMxcNy_dc_aKbqAJF5EGv3j4d36-tQ3pABwMy3jCLqsFbyzD1WdwJGeuJbyfX3JVFc53cmEo1Z_tXZKGZjAmvjhfXcVXMnP1HPvoixeyJMwir1zWrJMEjMXKWChc/s1600/Napoleon_Bonaparte.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjMJQMF3gEq6xQ-TSJMxcNy_dc_aKbqAJF5EGv3j4d36-tQ3pABwMy3jCLqsFbyzD1WdwJGeuJbyfX3JVFc53cmEo1Z_tXZKGZjAmvjhfXcVXMnP1HPvoixeyJMwir1zWrJMEjMXKWChc/s320/Napoleon_Bonaparte.jpg" width="188" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
is partly due to the diffuse nature of power in developed societ<span style="font-size: small;">ies</span>. Power
centers are so numerous and so balanced that it is becoming
increasingly difficult to effect meaningful change. The resistance
Gay Marriage is meeting today in France, while it is a painless
reform, is a case in point.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
is also partly due to the effects of peak energy, both because
governments increasingly lack the means to implement reforms and
because, since the energy surplus available to actually do something
in our societies is dwindling, those who want to become rich shy away
from industry and flock into finance and banking, aka summoning of
imaginary wealth.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Add
to this the rise, after the eighties, of <i>laissez-faire</i>
ideologies exemplified by Reagan or Thatcher, and it is easy to
understand why the finance industry has become so powerful. By the
way, and ironically, the come back of those once discredited
<i>laissez-faire</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> ideologies
originated from the left moving away from social issues such as
wages or working conditions during the seventies and adopting a generally more
individualistic and anti-authoritarian stance – what we call in
France the 68 thought.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
power is, however, as brittle as the Bank of Saint-George’s,
perhaps even more. Bankers and traders have no army and command no
loyalty. They can’t even hire mercenaries like the Bank of
Saint-George did. The cost would bankrupt them and they would
probably be quickly defeated. Their power lies in their ability to
use and manipulate the corset of rules our society has given itself
and to influence politicians who belong more or less to the same
world.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Should
society decides to play by other rules, or should political elites
distance themselves from the finance, their influence will just
disappear. You does not necessarily need a revolution for that, by
the way. Franklin Delanoe Roosevelt and French President Charles de
Gaulle both made sweeping changes in their countries’ policies
without using violent or unconstitutional means – De Gaulle came
into power through a quasi coup, granted, but he did not use violence and the
regime he installed was, and is still democratic.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
matters is not the supposed power of such or such economic power
center but our collective ability to accept the idea that the
ultimate sovereignty belongs to the political and that private and
factional interests prevail only because we allow them to do so. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That
does not mean, of course, that you can wish away the political and
sociological consequences of peak energy or, for that matter, that it
is a good idea to oppose bare-handedly a government both able and
willing to use force against you – those who have tried have gotten
into real troubles.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdur5knBlVmXVjfddou3IPZmJ8UJgsjZUEkML8W3CPmRzbvpeL92mCrJ4jDvH7fvAvjQ14ogBIIwLnM2PvajoNnrbS2VbUweoAoOFWtFwGXyHTk8A6dt7Kp9MBuyJQOa1Xx6phBDPa8UA/s1600/Couder_-_Le_Serment_du_Jeu_de_Paume,_20_juin_1789.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdur5knBlVmXVjfddou3IPZmJ8UJgsjZUEkML8W3CPmRzbvpeL92mCrJ4jDvH7fvAvjQ14ogBIIwLnM2PvajoNnrbS2VbUweoAoOFWtFwGXyHTk8A6dt7Kp9MBuyJQOa1Xx6phBDPa8UA/s320/Couder_-_Le_Serment_du_Jeu_de_Paume,_20_juin_1789.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
that means is that the finance industry is not the nearly invincible
behemoth described by far left (or far right) mythology. It has not
the means to coerce the society and deprived from the support of those who can, it
will prove as brittle and evanescent as the theoretically
all-powerful Bank of Saint-George.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If
you want to curb its power, I suggest you go to your nearest
congressman and tell him about the Bank of Saint-George... and of the
man on the white horse who decreed it out of existence... and of the
way he got into power... and of what happened to those who got in his
way.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">He
might listen.</span></span></div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-53971116241863878442013-03-02T22:50:00.003-08:002013-03-02T22:50:44.184-08:00Cultural diversity
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyw4CF_TV1cQoYlWdB6-y5mnA3iPtAZZbjWDTmE9RdCOl_7cawRI-JxX_Z7hIZW2PG4dvF2IT0latHDXKslGO5YI8IT00lwud8xnFj5O4H1zTqEGgZw1TaxLDL2kEz0tuVj6nKW8hPIoU/s1600/Malaya_1905.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyw4CF_TV1cQoYlWdB6-y5mnA3iPtAZZbjWDTmE9RdCOl_7cawRI-JxX_Z7hIZW2PG4dvF2IT0latHDXKslGO5YI8IT00lwud8xnFj5O4H1zTqEGgZw1TaxLDL2kEz0tuVj6nKW8hPIoU/s320/Malaya_1905.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Modern
societies like cultural diversity, preferably when it is far away,
reasonably photogenic and does not inconvenience them politically.
They also like to marginalize minority cultures and transform them
either into folkloric caricatures or into assimilated ghosts of their
former selves. During the last two centuries, modern civilization has
absorbed most of Earth's cultural diversity and is currently quite
busy assimilating or destroying the rest while multiplying the
subcultures in its midst. It is a typical case of replacing
geographical cultural diversity by internal heterogeneity. It had to
be expected from societies which had, until recently, accumulated an
embarrassing surplus of cheap energy, but that is still a bad idea,
and one which will become really problematic as our energetic surplus
dries up.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Contrary
to what many people think we aren’t a fangless, clawless maladapted
ape which only its intelligence saved from extinction. We are superb
long distance runners and walkers. We are very good at throwing
things at mobile targets – for instances sharpened sticks at
antelopes. We have a very good cooling system which makes us very
heat-tolerant and a remarkable eyesight which makes us highly
effective predators in an open or semi-open environment.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcqZoxnQ1Y8Q_D67xWlWSSsRKT_0OBQcFxv2ZUOe1cW52ui-ChbAmpXqZSE1Nug3pDc-cfyMufBti9aWvq86UqDCXqKgoRp_sdX48gWgmuOfVNiQeyTzAK1SnmmI8Bom4uFTNQoQwklz4/s1600/Neandertaler-im-Museum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcqZoxnQ1Y8Q_D67xWlWSSsRKT_0OBQcFxv2ZUOe1cW52ui-ChbAmpXqZSE1Nug3pDc-cfyMufBti9aWvq86UqDCXqKgoRp_sdX48gWgmuOfVNiQeyTzAK1SnmmI8Bom4uFTNQoQwklz4/s320/Neandertaler-im-Museum.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We are
tropical savanna animals, at home in steppes and prairies provided
there are at least a few trees in them but ill at ease in dense
forests, where a predator can strike without warning. It is not by
chance that we wrestled the world from our competitors at a time when
most of Eurasia was covered by cold steppes. The outcome would have
been very different in a warmer, wetter climate.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It is
obvious, however, that we don’t all live in tropical savannas. In
fact, a significant part of the human population lives in ecosystems
totally unsuited for our species such as swamps (where our cooling
system kind of underperform) or tundras (remember, we are <i>tropical</i>
animals). We have to some extend adapted our bodies to those new
environments but this remains limited. People living in cold
climates are lighter-skinned, not fur-covered.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In fact,
humanity has a very low genetic diversity, to the point it could
become a problem should a really nasty bug arise, and the diversity
which matters (for instance the prevalence of haemochromatosis in
north-western Europe) is most of the time totally unrelated to
today’s ethnic and cultural realities.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">During
most of our history, we have adapted to new environments, or to
changes in our environment, by developing new technologies or social
devices. Thus, when the climate changed 12,000 years ago and the
herds which kept our paleolithic ancestors fed and clothed retreated
northward, the tribes of Western Europe adopted the bow, a weaker but
more accurate weapon than the spear-thrower, to hunt in the dense
forests which soon came to cover Europe. Their cousins in the
middle-east gathered around fields of wild cereals, changing their
social structure to adapt to their new situation.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJbrBCYRkGQ7gyH01AXrSpjyn803B8VPlN6PMLxcafgW3yGdFtmYT1MGgZEBdXTwD42jOVDrfZI6qoDIOXYwAciGy56CunhqNLaZf0UZNDoUOkklNFMwdZT80qpBZDmi1u6DEBywMPIPs/s1600/490px-Indig2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJbrBCYRkGQ7gyH01AXrSpjyn803B8VPlN6PMLxcafgW3yGdFtmYT1MGgZEBdXTwD42jOVDrfZI6qoDIOXYwAciGy56CunhqNLaZf0UZNDoUOkklNFMwdZT80qpBZDmi1u6DEBywMPIPs/s320/490px-Indig2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This is
by now way a foolproof process. The native population of Kangaroo
Island, or, more recently, the Greenland Vikings failed to adapt to a
changing environment and went extinct, as did the first inhabitants
of Palau.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Developing
and maintaining a technology or a set of customs is costly and in
small populations even basic technologies can be lost. The natives of
Sentinel Island, for instance, no longer know how to make fire and
the Mesolithic tribes of Western Europe quickly discarded the
spear-thrower when reindeer were replaced by more elusive deer and
roes.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Indeed,
human groups tend to discard technologies they no longer need. After
the late bronze age collapse, for instance, the highly organized
Mycennian kingdoms were destroyed and replaced by a collection of
independent villages too poor and too small to need a bureaucracy.
The royal scribes became peasants and writing was forgotten in a mere
generation.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
result has been a specialization of human groups, a trend reinforced
by linguistic and cultural drift – inevitable in a low-tech
environment – but also by our tendency, as social animals, to build
our collective identity around cultural markers. Of course mergers,
more or less voluntary, happen as does cultural diffusion but even a
cursory look at a linguistic map of pre-industrial Europe or of
pre-contact America will show that their effects have been temporary
at best.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">A wave
of newcomers could unify culturally a large areas, as the
Indo-Europeans did in Europe, the Bantus in Africa and the
Pama–Nyungan in Australia, but they will soon fall to the combined
forces of specialization and cultural fragmentation.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2VPBwrnjyFKUh-kgB8jL5MEusbJaJs_ywSdl0tJ-CQ8BroZ-GGoKE8ut6bPYKW0RMZh9OkAI6_sI9BmKmdmUqHst3EcAII3jE52FbE2evdPtwHEMt4aFirqHXuliGuHy0kdczm5bdvpc/s1600/Funeralesdeatahualpa_luismontero.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2VPBwrnjyFKUh-kgB8jL5MEusbJaJs_ywSdl0tJ-CQ8BroZ-GGoKE8ut6bPYKW0RMZh9OkAI6_sI9BmKmdmUqHst3EcAII3jE52FbE2evdPtwHEMt4aFirqHXuliGuHy0kdczm5bdvpc/s320/Funeralesdeatahualpa_luismontero.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
advent of cheap and plentiful energy changed the rules of the game,
however. Long distance conquest and tribute extraction are probably
as old as empires, and in no way a Western specialty. Imposing one’s
culture in an ecosystem to which it was not suited was quite another
matter. European invaders could conquer the precolombian American
states, which, by definition, were located in areas suited to
agriculture. They could colonize the eastern seaboard which has
roughly the same climate as Western Europe. Permanently occupying the
rain forests, the deserts or the pampa was far more problematic.
Those areas remained under effective Indian control until very late
in the game. It was even worst (or better, depending from your point
of view) in Africa where diseases played against us.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpnHtcAhPzyHjT9vyncv8zQfDLx7ZxWjkpHXJhNJWYjBSdFQMn9XYtnyzMdha_Um4BJKWP6o6wdO9YNEu3mq2puqpRAB7VrFj0hQQxkcyhMxWO8wOZi_sbXX9M5Dlys_W6Q6Nsn6ID7p4/s1600/Crowd_in_HK.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpnHtcAhPzyHjT9vyncv8zQfDLx7ZxWjkpHXJhNJWYjBSdFQMn9XYtnyzMdha_Um4BJKWP6o6wdO9YNEu3mq2puqpRAB7VrFj0hQQxkcyhMxWO8wOZi_sbXX9M5Dlys_W6Q6Nsn6ID7p4/s320/Crowd_in_HK.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Fossil
fuels, however, enabled us to fit the environment to our culture
rather than the other way around. This is not an uncommon occurrence
in nature and something very similar happens every time we flood a
meadow with manure. This sudden glut of nutrients favors fast-growing
weedy species which will soon smother out more efficient but less
profligate plants, leaving very verdant but quite monotonous grass
meadows. A similar process has been happening all over the world
since the beginning of the industrial age, causing growth-oriented
variants of European and East-Asian cultures to spread to areas
where, in normal times, they could not have thrived. It also has
caused the rise of a global meta-culture characterized by a common
faith in progress.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
other, more specialized cultures, survive only in margins and should
industrialism have proved sustainable, they would have had to choose
between dying out and becoming a mere variant of the the global
culture.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH3MBcdqeK8g26yuxLrPu4NEmyuncsg_ILcjxGObb1PhUMz0b5vQ2r_7G2TnLPLC7YJFoYqjlhCoymTqatD0DweJAoRPb6XirjAMftmBf3Ya0rVC4seEu6QrVTIgpDDjaL4LuGEXgG3Ss/s1600/Kesselhaus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH3MBcdqeK8g26yuxLrPu4NEmyuncsg_ILcjxGObb1PhUMz0b5vQ2r_7G2TnLPLC7YJFoYqjlhCoymTqatD0DweJAoRPb6XirjAMftmBf3Ya0rVC4seEu6QrVTIgpDDjaL4LuGEXgG3Ss/s320/Kesselhaus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We know,
however, that industrialism is not sustainable. Earth’s innards
holds only so much recoverable fossil fuels and we have already
extracted the best part of it. Production of crude oil has plateaued
and it is only a matter of time before other fossil fuels follow
suit. Ultimately our civilization will be left with only what wind
sun and water can provide. While this does not mean that all our
technologies will become unsustainable, our current strategy of
adapting our environment to ourselves clearly will.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Add to
this that the environment itself is likely to drastically change
thanks to our deplorable habit of dumping truckloads of CO2 into the
atmosphere, and it becomes quite obvious that cultural diversity will
come back with a vengeance. Western – and East-Asian culture will
have to retreat from areas unsuited to their preferred lifestyle, or
change so much in the process that it will amount to the same. The
poster child for this will probably be American desert cities such as
Phoenix or Las Vegas, but northern China or the Southern Spain are
prime candidates for such an evolution too. Whoever will inhabit
those areas two centuries from now will have to adopt the same
lifestyle as preindustrial desert tribes.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0VnMVbRYC18xXZzqSiI1qvbylGoX-2MfqGq0QFetUqvRcj4Do8ArJY5VxY7u6UMJznzflks0u32GMX7r6Y5Jn6HBP-lNIAuF2h5fmQIywnMeRMTUBgMn3SexOGWJPCais033qNwUBop0/s1600/318px-Sami_woman_with_white_reindeer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0VnMVbRYC18xXZzqSiI1qvbylGoX-2MfqGq0QFetUqvRcj4Do8ArJY5VxY7u6UMJznzflks0u32GMX7r6Y5Jn6HBP-lNIAuF2h5fmQIywnMeRMTUBgMn3SexOGWJPCais033qNwUBop0/s320/318px-Sami_woman_with_white_reindeer.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
problem is that those who have kept the technologies, both social and
material, needed to thrive in ecosystem hostile to European or
East-Asian style agriculture are likely to be early casualties. Even
when they still form viable cultural units, they are too specialized
to survive intact the effect of global warming. Besides, they are
militarily extremely weak and would be destroyed without the
protection of modern nation states – even the Sentinelese, who have
made an habit of shooting down everybody sailing too close to their
island will be soon overrun when Indian policemen will stop
protecting them.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
means that we will have to rebuild a cultural diversity anew by
acquiring skills and social habits adapted to ecosystems which do not
yet exist at the exact moment the few people who still master those
skills are on the verge of cultural extinction. Moreover, those
people won't profit in any way from our collapse for the world we
will left will be different enough that , to survive, they will have
to completely reconfigure their culture. The Inuits, for instance,
may still exist two centuries from now, especially in Greenland, but
they will be more likely to raise cattle than to hunt seals, they
will have horses, not sled dogs and the place of snow and ice in
their culture will have been seriously reduced.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Even so,
rebuilding cultural diversity is by no mean an impossible task. As a
species we are very good at borrowing technologies and cultural
features from our neighbors and calling them our own. Here in
Brittany we eat a very typical buckwheat pancake called “galette”,
yet buckwheat is a Chinese, which was never cultivated in Western
Europe before the XIV<sup>th</sup> century.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1_-vEt4mNpt6c5K2LsBWGAWqpTP2lwcD3hE1oA8WN8Y2i6L9UaxV8tuOIdaWucaXgb7SYARMEJzhppVPmMcUlPBoVG4ioYAviU7pPa-VQXVU6f8SeIDm982Yowa3a1jMv2Eu-2HerDX0/s1600/640px-Manuscript-Alexander-Highsmith.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1_-vEt4mNpt6c5K2LsBWGAWqpTP2lwcD3hE1oA8WN8Y2i6L9UaxV8tuOIdaWucaXgb7SYARMEJzhppVPmMcUlPBoVG4ioYAviU7pPa-VQXVU6f8SeIDm982Yowa3a1jMv2Eu-2HerDX0/s320/640px-Manuscript-Alexander-Highsmith.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In fact,
the internal diversity of our own society, doomed as it is, can be an
asset in that matter. While I fail to see the point of most of our
subcultures, their sheer number means that there always will be
someone to document or perpetuate the technological and societal
skills of some half-forgotten tribe. Whether it will be enough,
however, is quite another matter as it means preserving a knowledge
which will be quite irrelevant to our everyday life until quite late
in the game. This implies a serious amount of geekery and
self-marginalization and definitely won't get you money or influence.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">A bit
like copying Latin books in Dark Age Britain.</span></div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-77936814414644585752013-01-30T06:44:00.000-08:002013-01-30T07:47:03.307-08:00Client states<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7slSkUERhqpfA5jfouQa-uU_uZlSqp_4G0YSNmUtxwq8prUeUiWQxDh_yVZEAmD8ACZjjQdm1dEQ0rFozOsQHKkH0CaZB3rQSOAN5rnFV23vtCjZHx9LSjSz_u4c9YcwmNriS2OK1MMs/s1600/286px-William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(1825-1905)_-_The_Motherland_(1883).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7slSkUERhqpfA5jfouQa-uU_uZlSqp_4G0YSNmUtxwq8prUeUiWQxDh_yVZEAmD8ACZjjQdm1dEQ0rFozOsQHKkH0CaZB3rQSOAN5rnFV23vtCjZHx9LSjSz_u4c9YcwmNriS2OK1MMs/s320/286px-William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(1825-1905)_-_The_Motherland_(1883).jpg" width="191" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As
you probably know, France has been at war for two weeks now. This
does not change everything to our daily life and I don’t plan to
raid the nearby supermarket for supply (well, maybe for cat food but
that’s a vital necessity) and I am more likely to be stricken by a
stray meteor than blown up by an islamist bomb. The bulk of the
political class supports the war and while the anti-imperialist crowd
can still be heard, it is far less loud and numerous than usually and
while there are a few questions to ask our president about the
procedure – he didn’t notify the National Assembly, for instance
– the principle of the intervention is contested only by marginals
and outsiders.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
is most interesting in this affair, however, is not the war, or
whether it is just or not it is justified, but the fate of client
states in the time of decline.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is not the first time a bunch of religious fanatics ride out of the
desert to take over a country. Students of Spanish history will
remember the Almohads and the Almoravids, who nearly stopped the
reconquista. More recently we had the Mahdist state in Sudan and the
Wahabi of Arabia, who threatened the Ottoman Empire and sacked the
Shia holy city of Karbala in 1801. </span></span>
</div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMGAmwQKRW1no7LHX05WpqEOPdfMjT18irGhn2oIcxrcFTODhLJXWE5O-DL27fouhOcKUf17rCQqhyphenhyphenw5BV8lSRDhkQv9GACtj3PvJBEVXtH04e13x-FwqCTr0O_D7S_zw808LOpCHu0_o/s1600/Battle_of_Grunwald.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMGAmwQKRW1no7LHX05WpqEOPdfMjT18irGhn2oIcxrcFTODhLJXWE5O-DL27fouhOcKUf17rCQqhyphenhyphenw5BV8lSRDhkQv9GACtj3PvJBEVXtH04e13x-FwqCTr0O_D7S_zw808LOpCHu0_o/s320/Battle_of_Grunwald.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
has never been a muslim speciality, by the way. Driven out of Acre,
the Teutonic Knights set up a monastic state along the southern coast
of the Baltic coast during the early XIX<sup>th</sup> century. They
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>converted by the sword<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"</span>
the Baltic tribes and found themselves at war with nearly all their
(Christian) neighbours. As for the Roman Empire, it had to fight
Jewish apocalyptic sects, often on the battlefield.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is not the first time France intervenes in the area either. Mali was
conquered by France at the end of the XIX<sup>th</sup> century after
the defeat of the last native state, Samory Toure’s Ouassoulou
Empire. It was then integrated within the French colonial empire. </span></span>
</div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Moreover,
unlike in Indochina or Algeria, France was not driven out. It decided
to leave.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">After
the take over of the French government by De Gaulle in a quasi coup
in 1958 and the drafting of a new constitution, the African French
colonies were stuffed into an <i>ad hoc</i> structure, the French
Community, headed by the French president. In practice that meant
that the colonies were now free to run their internal affairs as they
saw fit while France kept the control of military and foreign affairs
and of the economy. There was an attempt at creating a federal
structure uniting west-african colonies into a coherent whole, the
<i>Federation du Mali</i>. It failed, because the richest colony,
Ivory Coast did not want to subsidy the other ones, and only Senégal
and Mali joined.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
French Community was dissolved <i>de facto</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
in 1960 as France granted independence to everybody. The </span><i>Fedération
du Mali</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> disappeared quickly,
following a slight disagreement about the name of the president, and
what remained was a string of weak, artificial states with often
unstable governments, subject to regular coups.</span></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Of course France did not
really left. Only its civil servants did. They were replaced by large
corporations such as Elf-Aquitaine or, more recently Areva, and by a
network of “advisors” nicknamed the “Foccard Network”, from
the name of the French (not so) official in charge of France's
African policy.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6j0X4yhL4wCtSC2WozWw9dTYOytTGuAPbLyW8KDt9MiHWwLzMaxRhwHyGc6oeeG2-hnMlh8QmB7f5PEpU8j6_nEyW8klUXdQ3MZ_58kprqfDeouRiLOiocUK8E8GgEL3loMMoQD8wFo0/s1600/Afrique_32.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6j0X4yhL4wCtSC2WozWw9dTYOytTGuAPbLyW8KDt9MiHWwLzMaxRhwHyGc6oeeG2-hnMlh8QmB7f5PEpU8j6_nEyW8klUXdQ3MZ_58kprqfDeouRiLOiocUK8E8GgEL3loMMoQD8wFo0/s320/Afrique_32.JPG" width="214" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
goal of this policy, nicknamed “Françafrique” was to make sure
that France continues to enjoy a privileged access to African
resources and that African wealth continues to flow toward Paris.
African rulers were also supposed to support France
internationally... and to send wallets full of banknotes to whatever
party held power in Paris at the moment.</span></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">France also kept military
bases it used to support dictators (such as Mbaa in Gabon) or to
remove those who had become, let's say, annoying – for instance His
Imperial Majesty Bokassa the First, Emperor of Central Africa. Of
course, more shadowy, if not really subtle, methods were used. Just
ask mercenary Bob Denard – or rather don't ask him, he has
conveniently caught Alzheimer's disease before dying a near beggar.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Former French colonies
have, in essence, become French client states. This situation has
advantages, mind you. Paris guarantees the independence of its
vassals and has proved perfectly able and willing to back its words
with boots and guns. When, in 1983, Lybia launched 11.000 troops
across the Chadian desert, France drew a line in the sand and sent
3.000 elite soldiers (mostly marines and legionaries) and several
squadrons of Jaguars.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It did it again in 1986,
and while Chadian technicals ousted Gaddafi during the 1987 Toyota
war, it would have been far more difficult if the French air force
had not grounded its Lybian counterpart, turning the Lybian army into
a collection of isolated garrisons which could be defeated in
details.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This protection had,
however, the same consequence as for all client states in history :
military impotence.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The armies of former
French colonies, with the recent and possible exception of Chad, are
walking farces. The 7.000 strong Malian Army has collapsed last year
before a rebel force half as numerous and in 1977 the whole Comorian
Republic was conquered by 43 mercenaries led by Bob Denard.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw0MjIPDAa1B2S5q6sqVcEhHx5_9ycfH0VUF3cHXE5CaofCbufLRNQ_a5DsQhY0vXnQrohxNDelf1WQu_BMFgra2Xk8xtTvIkhkQSdoAKYU2fEj8SYUjqDwzifIc2DNs1b7scG5AXPM7s/s1600/Armed_insurgents,_First_Ivorian_Civil_War.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw0MjIPDAa1B2S5q6sqVcEhHx5_9ycfH0VUF3cHXE5CaofCbufLRNQ_a5DsQhY0vXnQrohxNDelf1WQu_BMFgra2Xk8xtTvIkhkQSdoAKYU2fEj8SYUjqDwzifIc2DNs1b7scG5AXPM7s/s1600/Armed_insurgents,_First_Ivorian_Civil_War.jpg" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is not a bug, it is a
feature. When your independence is guaranteed by a foreign overlord,
you have no incentive to build an even moderately efficient army –
and said overlord may not be so happy at your doing it, as it makes
regime change more costly. You may even have an incentive not to
build an efficient army. This army might, after all, use its new
force to topple you. If the armed force of Gabon hadn't be a pushover
in 1964, President Mbaa would have had to find himself a new home and
a new job, and, by the way, there is a reason why a third of the
5.000 strong Gabonese army belongs to the presidential guard.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Besides, when you can
count on a powerful ally to intervene and save the day when things
get rough, you tend to become complacent... and not to fight to hard.
That's why a few hundreds rag-tag rebels managed recently to conquer
a great part of the Central African Republic, sweeping away a 4.500
strong national army, which most of the time did not even bother to
fight. Only French, South-African and Angolan sabre-rattling saved
President Bozizé's regime and convinced its opponents that
negotiating was a better idea than storming a capital held by
somebody who could actually shoot back.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The problem, of course is
that overlords have a limited shelf life, and their client states
rarely survive them. We know, for instance, what happened to Indian
princely states when the British Raj left. Many of them were to small
to be viable (the state of Darkoti, for instance had 632 inhabitants
for 5 square miles), but some were larger than many European states.
Yet, their combined military amounted only to 18.000 men in 1941 and
those native rulers who played with the idea of independence saw
their dreams quickly quashed. The Indian army took a mere five days
to crush the forces of the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1948. A mere threat
was enough for the Kingdom of Travancore.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMRNzLobhAhcMqrW_3JygEky9MYEyOJAkeGy94j2gQwj_W4FPaWuCyDxYsJbNUMfcdtsSP_gmugKr4_sj1uUj3Ek22fBX2yXXWRC2mi7_n6_M7iSjYscV9j02FdVj_siDgtnDLYMSofAE/s1600/053_French_Foreign_Legion.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMRNzLobhAhcMqrW_3JygEky9MYEyOJAkeGy94j2gQwj_W4FPaWuCyDxYsJbNUMfcdtsSP_gmugKr4_sj1uUj3Ek22fBX2yXXWRC2mi7_n6_M7iSjYscV9j02FdVj_siDgtnDLYMSofAE/s320/053_French_Foreign_Legion.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">France is no longer a
world power, but it still has an efficient and modern army. Man for
man, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Foreign_Legion">Legion</a>
or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troupes_de_Marine">Troupes
de Marine</a> can stand up to anything the United States can field.
We can manufacture our own third generation tank (the Leclerc) and
fourth generation fighter (Rafale) and are not dependent on any
foreign power for small arms and ammunition. We even have our own
modern combat suit (the FELIN program).</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The problem is that our
projection capability is limited, and more so with every passing
year. During Operation Desert Storm France fielded 18.000 soldiers,
less the Egypt, and only because we benefited of American logistics.
Alone, and in a combat situation, we would be hard pressed to field
more than 5.000 men, mostly the Legion and troupes de marines. That's
more than enough to defeat a bunch of jihadists or the army of some
African rogue state, but not enough to take on somebody serious. We
played a major role in the Libyan Civil War, but only because Libya
was in range of our air force, which enabled us to effectively
support insurgents. We couldn't do the same thing in Syria, for
instance, as our lone carrier is operational only 65% of the time.
Even in Mali, our deployment would have been far slower, if the
United States had not loaned us three C-17ER Globemaster III
transport planes. </span></span>
</div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyamqYMXiAL9lHFbEsp4u0Q1xE-JivisPg3ZIwrs11cM6VlQM7IhHodaAS1HC-N-_a9WuvFjY_mpg0WrrNhRdZIPOi42yh7Z63lRJcc6vW4fphxdfn-EiN-3vBY66vVpKCqAzFcBYvH0s/s1600/640px-21e_RIMa_Bastille_Day_2008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyamqYMXiAL9lHFbEsp4u0Q1xE-JivisPg3ZIwrs11cM6VlQM7IhHodaAS1HC-N-_a9WuvFjY_mpg0WrrNhRdZIPOi42yh7Z63lRJcc6vW4fphxdfn-EiN-3vBY66vVpKCqAzFcBYvH0s/s320/640px-21e_RIMa_Bastille_Day_2008.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And this won't get better
with time. France is a medium-sized country, with few industries left
and virtually no natural resources. We produce only a tiny fraction
of our energy and even if some of our clients supply us with oil
(mostly Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville) or uranium (mostly Niger),
that's hardly sufficient.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As a privileged ally of
the United States, we also benefit from the tribute economy they have
set up, even if it is to a lesser degree. That means, however, that
we will suffer from its decline – in fact we already do – as we
depend upon them to continue to funnel a disproportional share of the
World's resource our way. When the United States will cease to be a
global power, we will no longer be able to keep the sea-lanes open
and to guarantee our continued access to the many resources we need.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Besides, even though we
manage our resources better than the US, we need a continued inflow
of high quality resources to make our society work. If we don't get
enough of it, our infrastructures will begin to decay and our society
to unravel.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In fact it is what is
happening right now. We are slowly dismantling our welfare state,
either by selling it off to private interests, diminishing service
quality, or by dumping whole services on local authorities. Of
course, this also impacts our military. The project of second carrier
has been cancelled and we can be sure that the Charles de Gaulle will
never be replaced. The production of the Leclerc main battle tank has
been stopped – even though we retain the capacity to produce them,
should the need arise.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">More insidious, but more
important, budget cuts will negatively impact maintenance and
training and trigger a slow but steady slide into unreadiness. The
intervention troops will remain fully operational longer, but they
too will be hit by the erosion of our logistic and the increasing
unreadiness of the support arms.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is only a matter of
time before we can no longer wage war even in Africa. We may
experience a military defeat, or be quietly told to please vacate the
place, or just throw the towel, the result will be the same for our
erstwhile vassals : they will have to provide for their own defence.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjeZVR7AE_BVqQgFBpEHi1y7caPKrKdZhIOg9DX_6MuAPxiPiwNeUR6u1Lhb7ZzDqKF0OA7mMq4RidgCdKd3bS2jziV_Cxqpj-BydjXmMHNGgkyc_ko_64-fvb-UXNfDVGzslaCuIsa2U/s1600/640px-Guerriers_derviches.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjeZVR7AE_BVqQgFBpEHi1y7caPKrKdZhIOg9DX_6MuAPxiPiwNeUR6u1Lhb7ZzDqKF0OA7mMq4RidgCdKd3bS2jziV_Cxqpj-BydjXmMHNGgkyc_ko_64-fvb-UXNfDVGzslaCuIsa2U/s320/640px-Guerriers_derviches.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">They may find another
overlord or rely on local alliances, as the Democratic Republic of
Congo did during the Second Congo War. This will be a temporary
solution at best, however,. Without fossil fuels, and without the
technological superiority European polities enjoyed during the modern
era, global empires will become a thing of the past. As for African
states... if the Second Congo War proved that a few African states
(namely Zimbabwe and Angola) can project their force to prevent a
regime change, they are unlikely to keep this capability for long.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">On the long run, if those
states do not develop a real, autonomous military tradition – which
would mean getting rid of today’s predatory elite – they will be
overrun by rebels and warlords, islamist or not. Ultimately the
polities they will create will coalesce into stable and permanent
states. It may be a relatively quick process, like in Northern
Somalia, it may be a long chaotic one like in Dark Age Britain or
France. In both case this will involve severe cultural losses. A few
of those losses will be beneficial - Africa could and should do
without colonial languages and neo-colonial predatory elite – most
won't. The idea of democracy will likely be an early casualty (the
practice is not so widespread in the area).</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is in great part our
fault. The native states we conquered during the scramble for Africa
were hardly perfect but they were the emanation of coherent and
healthy societies. We have replaced them by weak states dependent on
us for their survival and for which the energy descent is likely to
translate into utter chaos.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The only thing we can try
and do now is eliminate the most barbaric threats while we still can
do it – and that's why the present war is a relatively good thing –
and help them develop the self-reliance they need.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">By disengaging.</span></span></div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-28841741875349074262013-01-01T06:35:00.000-08:002013-01-01T06:35:26.688-08:00Political crisis and choices
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3yB5vRkrmy_eGpUF-_7dWLoBn7oH2ic2-Yb22pKKl20g5FXJT61CuTc394IeJAvhsA3XFluEQoWcJB8xfqjTHZStrE09VE-h-MqS6JcK5dqaRWd7u0Km5iMPMLDDmLZB8r1g5gbUBO34/s1600/YuanShikaiPresidente1915.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3yB5vRkrmy_eGpUF-_7dWLoBn7oH2ic2-Yb22pKKl20g5FXJT61CuTc394IeJAvhsA3XFluEQoWcJB8xfqjTHZStrE09VE-h-MqS6JcK5dqaRWd7u0Km5iMPMLDDmLZB8r1g5gbUBO34/s320/YuanShikaiPresidente1915.jpg" width="233" /></a></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Politics
can be involuntarily funny. The 2000 presidential election certainly
was, seen from this side of the Atlantic, and while the Dominique
Strauss Kahn debacle was traumatic, the circumstances of our former
president to be’s fall make the whole episode somewhat amusing, at
least in retrospect. We just have had another of those Florida 2000
moments, but one which is very indicative of the situation of our
political system and of why we shouldn't count on it to give a
meaningful answer to our predicament.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After
its defeat in may, Nicolas Sarkozy has retired from politics, but his
party, the UMP, remained and, as could be expected his lieutenants
fought over the succession. One,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1437377958282996862">
Jean-Louis Borloo</a>, created a brand new party with the ambition to
control the center of the French political spectrum. It is not an
unprecedented strategy and it may succeed, or not. Two others,
François Fillon and Jean-Louis Copé aimed for the party leadership.
Those of you who can count will, I think, agree, that was one leader
too many.</span></div>
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</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
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</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Once,
the situation would have been resolved behind closed doors, with
party officials scheming and backstabbing until a choice has been
made – the winner would probably have been Copé, by the way, as he
had the full control of the apparatus.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This
way of proceeding has, however, somehow fallen out of fashion and
those days we prefer to put such decisions into the hands of
activists as it feels more democratic and make the elected leader's
legitimacy less questionable. Unfortunately this method can also
backfire spectacularly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It
certainly did in this case.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnP50IzKwo5FCucMGvTLG9fjys4g8xBNVIP4TB1rmJQXMtsKAFC4fGtsm88xyQ0y8vF-PsSjFjeG7bloISNsyWW2sZ3uDKoZ5K-cW1Vy8rwcm5hfXHQvIi4w9ZN6OgVyiyiVTjb5Tj2w/s1600/Gambetta_proclaiming_the_Republic_of_France_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_16910.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnP50IzKwo5FCucMGvTLG9fjys4g8xBNVIP4TB1rmJQXMtsKAFC4fGtsm88xyQ0y8vF-PsSjFjeG7bloISNsyWW2sZ3uDKoZ5K-cW1Vy8rwcm5hfXHQvIi4w9ZN6OgVyiyiVTjb5Tj2w/s320/Gambetta_proclaiming_the_Republic_of_France_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_16910.jpg" width="211" /></a></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Officially
Copé won the election with a lead of 98 voices, that is until one
noticed that somebody had forgotten three overseas departments. Of
course, and very conveniently, taking this couple of islands into
account reversed the result, giving François Fillon a lead of some
126 voices. Predictably, the whole episode degenerated into
opera-bouffe baboonery with both candidates accusing the other of
having rigged the election, which they probably both did by the way.
Copé, who had the loyalty of the party bureaucracy, clang to his
presidency like a barnacle to its rock. Fillon send a bailiff to put
the ballots under seals so they be not tampered with, then threatened
to sue his own party. Finally he triggered a schism among UMP members
of parliament, some 72 of which created a separate group in the
French National Assembly : the rump (no, I didn't make that up,
that's how it is called). Last I checked they have agreed to organize
a revote in September.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This
is not the first time such a misadventure happens to a French party.
In 2008, the election of the first secretary of the Socialist Party
had been a very close thing and both and Ségolène Royal (the loser)
accused, for a short while, Martine Aubry (the winner) of having
rigged the election. It has never before gone so far, however.</span></div>
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</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
irony is that there is no real ideological difference between
François Fillon and Jean-François Copé. They are both pro-business
and law-and-order conservatives, both dislike Muslims and both oppose
any alliance with the far right National Front. Moreover, the schism
has had no repercussion at the local level.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In
fact, their ideological similarity is the very reason why thins got
so heated.</span></div>
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</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Homo
Sapiens is a savanna hunter ape with a dominance-based society,
probably close, originally, to the baboons' – the primate genus
occupying the ecological niche closest to our ancestors'. Baboon
societies vary greatly and there is no need to think our ancestors'
was as brutally patriarchal as the hamadryas'. They are, however,
typically built around a core of competing dominant males which can
cooperate to defend the band against predators but are otherwise
rival.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG93tiX80bK8Saez3vMkoq5ks8OaLWDPVTbjyPUgqHCnDNCe6TYkM8YlGejaXUYPfdDM0ycUL4IyiVbFEFZuuTeNhq08R_q0fPZFi9H0js3NwHKFmN-qkUEg7CdUCRmhyPGs_lf5zSvjo/s1600/The_Roses_of_Heliogabalus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG93tiX80bK8Saez3vMkoq5ks8OaLWDPVTbjyPUgqHCnDNCe6TYkM8YlGejaXUYPfdDM0ycUL4IyiVbFEFZuuTeNhq08R_q0fPZFi9H0js3NwHKFmN-qkUEg7CdUCRmhyPGs_lf5zSvjo/s320/The_Roses_of_Heliogabalus.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Early
humans were pack hunters, however, and successful pack hunting
requires cooperation. So we evolved a number of social devices to
limit the power of dominants and make sure even those at the bottom
of the ladder get some part of the pie. Even a cursory look at human
history will show that it is still pretty much a work in progress.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ideology
is one of those devices. Of course, when allowed free reins, it can
generate social cancers such as Nazism, Bolshevism or our present
obsession with growth. Within the framework of a sane democratic
society, however, the existence of competing ideologies, what Max
Weber called the polytheism of values, is a guarantee not only that
the opinion of the common people will be heeded, since his support is
needed for a cause to triumph, but also that the behavior of the
dominants will be kept under control.</span></div>
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</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In
most complex human societies, leaders are leaders because they are
born that way (your average king or baron) or because they are
exceptionally good at rallying supporters (Timur or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongwu_Emperor">Hongwu
Emperor</a>). While they may have had an agenda - the Hongwu Emperor
was originally a member of a millenarian sect – it was generally
quickly forgotten once victory achieved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPVV1kPZjnEFS8q6wUjsNtm0p-Pusc1Q5g50Ah_MMqTD-Bha6L4KUh8T_e3ws2hC6II5N2Bgj0Q7Ynz_LIA1tKFqNR8C3co6F9K7PFyTCKi5z1u1-K8s2V6ilasvdVOVisTc3KHpl-0Ns/s1600/DemosthPracticing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPVV1kPZjnEFS8q6wUjsNtm0p-Pusc1Q5g50Ah_MMqTD-Bha6L4KUh8T_e3ws2hC6II5N2Bgj0Q7Ynz_LIA1tKFqNR8C3co6F9K7PFyTCKi5z1u1-K8s2V6ilasvdVOVisTc3KHpl-0Ns/s320/DemosthPracticing.jpg" width="249" /></a></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ideology
changes the game because even though the personal qualities of the
leader remain fundamental, he no longer owes his position to them,
but to being the spokesperson of such or such cause, and once in
power, he is definitely supposed to keep his word. Lukewarm as he
might be, our president would quickly lose power if he suddenly
morphed into a clone of Margaret Thatcher and when Chinese republican
leader Yuan Shikai tried to restore the monarchy in 1915 he was
quickly ousted.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Political
ideology, or to put it more specifically the tying of legitimacy to
the professing of a particular ideology, is the daughter of revealed
religions, most notably Islam and Christianity. The main
particularity of those religions is that they tie salvation not to
what you do but to what you believe. This explains the ferocity of
doctrinal quarrels in early Christianity. Being mistaken about the
nature of Christ could literally land you into the lake of fire.
Precisely defining the tenets of orthodox faith was therefore of
foremost importance.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Another
consequence was that since legitimacy ultimately came from God, it
could be withdrawn should you believe something He or His terrestrial
representatives disapproved of. The lands of an heretic or pagan king
could be seized with impunity. This is what happened to the Slavic
princes of what is today Eastern Germany, but also to the Irish kings
after the bull <i>Laudabiliter</i> allowed England to invade the
country to “root out the corruption within the local church”.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
centrality of doctrine in the Christian and Islamic religions made
nearly sure that at some point that disputes, which in other contexts
would have been safely contained within the walls of some university,
would morph into heresies then civil wars. In Islam this happened as
soon as 657 with the formation of the radical (and quite militant)
Kharijite sect. The medieval Church was very good at stamping down
opposition but it was bound to fail at some point. This nearly
happened during the Albigensian Crusade, when the Church was forced
to create an institution dedicated to the destruction of heresies :
the infamous inquisition.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisshTpueo4aBO5vDbVKH4ChyEWh97ilM4_0Lbik9TU0-n9L2WEl9iQcrxoEFOTXbHOAqy8rasXH7TuLYlR7N0rIZcvtf8ngD9ojTleGXrWenaQ_pN876dJ6fSQK1J1yNb7hsGPnABa1VE/s1600/Diet_of_Worms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisshTpueo4aBO5vDbVKH4ChyEWh97ilM4_0Lbik9TU0-n9L2WEl9iQcrxoEFOTXbHOAqy8rasXH7TuLYlR7N0rIZcvtf8ngD9ojTleGXrWenaQ_pN876dJ6fSQK1J1yNb7hsGPnABa1VE/s320/Diet_of_Worms.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This
was not enough, however, to prevent the temporary victory of the
Hussites during the early fifteenth century and, most importantly the
spread of the reformation after 1514 which started a cycle of wars
and civil strifes which lasted until the beginning of the eighteenth
century. One of the consequences was the displacement of religion as
the center of political life and its progressive replacement by
secular ideologies, the foundations of which were laid by Hobbes,
Locke and Voltaire but also, in a totally different way, Burke and
Herder.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
rise of secular ideologies was helped by another factor : industrial
revolution. The same way Leonardo da Vinci's flying machines were
unlikely to leave the drawing board without fossil fuels to power
them, the perfect societies designed by Plato, Tomasso Campanella or
Thomas More were bound to remain fantasies without the huge surplus
the industrial revolution and fossil fuels provided.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEingUAbQsKUIvhe3DOrZATED-7rlo0MYZSn3TEkfo6WwCvvES8vSIN2xz0xLxcAlvRDbqDODvk6C1b92pO_Xwh0iIpl4pYtuqkCTiu36hsPFKLAD7CHfTlHyV8f95ZDtTyfqGJsd9FRH1k/s1600/Mirabeau_Palais_de_Justice.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEingUAbQsKUIvhe3DOrZATED-7rlo0MYZSn3TEkfo6WwCvvES8vSIN2xz0xLxcAlvRDbqDODvk6C1b92pO_Xwh0iIpl4pYtuqkCTiu36hsPFKLAD7CHfTlHyV8f95ZDtTyfqGJsd9FRH1k/s320/Mirabeau_Palais_de_Justice.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
huge surplus engendered by industrialization enabled us to try
various social experiments, at least one of which, modern democracy,
was a real success. More important, they enabled us to choose between
different kind of policies, something which would have been
impossible in a resource-poor world. These choices, of course, would
have been unthinkable without the existence of competing political
ideologies. This is, by the way, one of the reasons why non-european
civilizations failed to industrialize.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of
course ideologies could, and did, run amok, but within the framework
of democracy, they provided the intellectual basis without which no
real choice was possible. The problem we face now is that the
surplus, that enabled us to enact those choices are dwindling and
will disappear in the near future.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
complexity of our society is such, that a very large part of our
energy production is used up to maintain our infrastructures. This
means that as we reach peak energy and begin the long descent, the
resources available to actually get things done will diminish with
every passing year, eroding the capacity of governments to do
anything meaningful. Of course, this impotence is also due to the
growth-oriented nature of our leading ideologies, but this is
unfortunately unlikely to change before the first disasters shatter
our world-view.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Without
the resources to enact choices, political ideologies become hollow
words, useful only at election time to mobilize what has essentially
become a captive audience. The political game reverts then to the
pure unadulterated baboonery it was before the emergence of
ideologies. The goal of the game is no longer to get in power to
enact such or such policy but to get in power to... well, enjoy it,
very much like your average Roman Emperor or Chinese warlord.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It
is also true, by the way, of those groups which have no realistic
chance to get in power. Being a minor ally of the ruling party can
bring real advantages and even outside of the circles of power, there
is prestige and even money to be had in small political sects, such
as the trotskyist groups or the Larouchist parties, or in anti-system
movements such as the French National Front.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This
is not so much hypocrisy as the result of a situation where real
political change has become nearly impossible and where faction
loyalty and cynicism are essential survival skill. While idealism is
still present, even among veterans, it is progressively buried under
"practicalities".</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixtjqU73cv1-TC9ZbaOWMOlGLEbYPrVIugHsHnkEvuEik7nPIQk7lVXZb6B6oTDg7HTfNj2r0EaS8Zf3SqMgzSR4Q1ZOYMoqxWN16fSbUx1Ei-bz5CVo0OLvhXxljBvCul5g5pgRR1qmI/s1600/Georges_Clemenceau.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixtjqU73cv1-TC9ZbaOWMOlGLEbYPrVIugHsHnkEvuEik7nPIQk7lVXZb6B6oTDg7HTfNj2r0EaS8Zf3SqMgzSR4Q1ZOYMoqxWN16fSbUx1Ei-bz5CVo0OLvhXxljBvCul5g5pgRR1qmI/s320/Georges_Clemenceau.jpg" width="224" /></a></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
most likely result will be a kind of quasi-oligarchy in which
elections are decided by the capacity of both major parties to
mobilize captive audiences and lobbies, and control smaller
allies. Bitter personal feuds will replace in-party ideological
quarrels and both the left and the right will focus on peripheral
societal issues to mask the fact their actual policies are nearly
indistinguishable. Frustration and apathy will rise and with them the
probability some authoritarian boss takes over.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Those
who are familiar with the French political life will recognize
today's climate.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
only way out of this predicament -short of handing power to an
uniformed thug, that is – is to accept that without a constant
inflow of high-grade energy, growth-oriented ideologies are hollow
and remove growth and material affluence from the equation. If we
want democracy to continue, we must base our political choices upon
something else than prosperity. It is easier said than done but if
you look at the works of the founders of our democracies, whether
they be on Locke's side or on Burke's, you'll find that they did not
care so much about wealth. Values such as equality, liberty or
tradition were far more important in their view.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Maybe
we should return to them.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-3821715585813958032012-11-15T05:36:00.001-08:002012-11-15T05:36:11.344-08:00Gay, gay, marrions-les
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg06xvRshCF82UG50zSv-OeOXPPtIKJ4JOTpLPLDzeEHsunkjF_SZUpQVPiJgnf9OgP-U8GLchGtwQDjzEIjU_9wU3uT3cn8yUrmeUgeXhWIeJ_D-p4uJcMtLykEA9DcGUC0x0m35rNvvY/s1600/Zeus_Kisses_Ganymede_(B%C3%B6ttner).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg06xvRshCF82UG50zSv-OeOXPPtIKJ4JOTpLPLDzeEHsunkjF_SZUpQVPiJgnf9OgP-U8GLchGtwQDjzEIjU_9wU3uT3cn8yUrmeUgeXhWIeJ_D-p4uJcMtLykEA9DcGUC0x0m35rNvvY/s320/Zeus_Kisses_Ganymede_(B%C3%B6ttner).jpg" width="229" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIuZrcloxi0Xs0kcYmGWZSJDtVR3tzhb-5YHFeuRHCkOr1mkN_mnEvvBuGl_y3mByJXvPLTVQPiM-g9cORZOKHuDSd3f7FSW5ro096oAi0YG5M8hvRmrV-dA6hL3GULUdnRJIqoR0HqEc/s1600/Lafond_Sappho_and_Homer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">France
is about to legalize gay marriage. This has caused some turmoil in
some part of the opinion and the right wing opposition bitterly
opposes it, mostly, I think, to show they are indeed the Opposition.
Indeed, the very fact that a measure which concerns only 5% of the
population has become, in the middle of a major economic crisis, one
of the focuses of our collective conversation tells a lot about how
impotent our rulers have become. As for me, I tend to favor it, first
because it does benefit a sizable part of the population and fails to
impact the rest in any meaningful way, and second, because it is the
logical conclusion of the choices our civilization made three
centuries ago, namely that marriage was the coronation of love and
that homosexuality was an identity rather than a practice. This is,
by the way a recent development, the advent of which correlates with
the advent of modern Western culture and of industrial
civilization... which of course begs the question : what will be the
future of gay marriage, or even of gayness in the deindustrial
future.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIuZrcloxi0Xs0kcYmGWZSJDtVR3tzhb-5YHFeuRHCkOr1mkN_mnEvvBuGl_y3mByJXvPLTVQPiM-g9cORZOKHuDSd3f7FSW5ro096oAi0YG5M8hvRmrV-dA6hL3GULUdnRJIqoR0HqEc/s1600/Lafond_Sappho_and_Homer.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIuZrcloxi0Xs0kcYmGWZSJDtVR3tzhb-5YHFeuRHCkOr1mkN_mnEvvBuGl_y3mByJXvPLTVQPiM-g9cORZOKHuDSd3f7FSW5ro096oAi0YG5M8hvRmrV-dA6hL3GULUdnRJIqoR0HqEc/s320/Lafond_Sappho_and_Homer.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Homosexuality
is a fact of nature. Some of us, male or female, are sexually
attracted,</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> exclusively or not, by members of our own sex. This
probably genetic in origin and not necessarily a bug. Whatever causes
homosexuality generally results in the affected people having less
children, obviously, so it must be somehow beneficial to their kin or
their cultural group, otherwise it would have been weeded out of the
genetic pool long ago. The way societies deal with it, however, vary
considerably. Some ignore its existence. Breton, for instance has no
word for “lesbian” and its words for “male homosexual” are
all recent loanwords, which is definitely weird for a language which
as many words for “beautiful woman” as Inuit has for snow.
Others, such as some native American tribes , used work gender roles
to hide away the sexual aspect of the question. Others still
relegated it to the margins of society to eliminate the problem it
posed, Islam, for instance or the medieval West.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Modern
Western civilization, and its imitators all over the world, is the
only one to have created a whole social identity around it.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo4a8W2xB-1nefNPkEA8Xl689bv4Eyv-ovTZl83w_usyP-b5EZdR_0h2MwynSj3jSiTz7JysYTFftkRkCnXNhOx0TZTATWRuf5wKynbCRiBtcmitVVO34W4_-Rt5A8i0IYrU1k8HKhNXo/s1600/Macaroni_19C_illus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Roman
Emperor Hadrian had a long affair with Bithynian Greek youth,
Antinous, yet was not considered as an homosexual in the modern sense
of the word. He was just a normal man who happened to have a
relationship with a boy, which was perfectly legit as long as he did
not adopt a submissive role. To quote Gibbon “<i>[O]f the first
fifteen emperors, Claudius was the only one whose taste in love was
entirely correct</i>." One of his successors, Elagabalus,
publicly lived with a charioteer whom he referred to as his husband.
He was reviled, not because of his choice of partner – not
different from Hadrian’s – but because he assumed a feminine,
submissive role. He was not gay, but effeminate, a qualification
which emphatically did not correlate with homosexuality.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo4a8W2xB-1nefNPkEA8Xl689bv4Eyv-ovTZl83w_usyP-b5EZdR_0h2MwynSj3jSiTz7JysYTFftkRkCnXNhOx0TZTATWRuf5wKynbCRiBtcmitVVO34W4_-Rt5A8i0IYrU1k8HKhNXo/s1600/Macaroni_19C_illus.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo4a8W2xB-1nefNPkEA8Xl689bv4Eyv-ovTZl83w_usyP-b5EZdR_0h2MwynSj3jSiTz7JysYTFftkRkCnXNhOx0TZTATWRuf5wKynbCRiBtcmitVVO34W4_-Rt5A8i0IYrU1k8HKhNXo/s320/Macaroni_19C_illus.jpg" width="229" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It
was also true in pre-modern Europe, even if , of course, the society
as a whole was far more repressive. The effeminate XVII<sup>th</sup>
century fop was a womanizer, while the English Restoration rake
courted (or bought) boys as well as girls. It was only during the
late XVII<sup>th</sup> century that appeared, in England, France and
the Dutch Republic, the now familiar figure of the “Molly”, that
is the effeminate homosexual male, with an identity and subculture
based upon his choice of partners.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This
happened just as those three countries where laying the foundation of
modern capitalism. They were not industrialized but a better mastery
of of wind and water power, as well as ruthless resource grabbing all
over the world, enabled them to concentrate into their hands a
disproportionate share of the world’s resources. This allowed them
to field large armies and navies, to better control their population
and to complexify their societies. This also triggered a number of
social changes, notably in gender roles. Humans, like most apes, are
sexually dimorphic, which results in differentiated gender roles.
Basically, in paleolithic societies, males were hunter and fighters
and competed for resources while females took care of the home-front
and competed for attention from the best providers – the latter
fact is important, even though it is overlooked by your average macho
; in most species females are drab and passive, ours have been
selected for assertiveness. The neolithic revolution complexified
things considerably as various decisions about who was going to do
what led to very different gender roles accord to the society. That’s
why you had Greek Gynaecea and Scythian amazons. Of course, even
then, there were considerable overlaps, and a significant number of
outliers. That’s why we had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspasia">Aspasia</a>
and Sapho. And from time to time, a whole society could undergo a
shift in gender roles.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">That
is what happened in early modern Europe. As societies got richer, it
became possible for upper, and upper middle class women to opt out of
the domestic economy. This was certainly advantageous for them, but
by doing so they put an ever larger distance between the home, and
therefore married life, and the public square. The result, as Michel
Foucault argue was that while prior to the 18th century, discourse on
sexuality focused on the productive role of the married couple In the
18th and 19th centuries society took an increasing interest in
sexualities that did not fit within this union. This led to an
increasing categorization of "perverts"; where previously a
man who engaged in same-sex activities would be labeled as an
individual who succumbed to the sin of sodomy, now they would be
categorized into a new "species", that of the homosexual.
The result was both increased repression and a cementing of gay
identity.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQYBmwZtgfrVOZNp9L3SCRFikwJsqC5hnf01nN_g2rqhHvm4TByki17-klmqjZhpBaKvPICxN2vbmEzn93Pv_bVHK0VjGQ6mP7AZelhCms1B7-mIVOi_dTK7E30A_59_G5YOjsZCWkMBk/s1600/640px-Pattaya_transwomen_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQYBmwZtgfrVOZNp9L3SCRFikwJsqC5hnf01nN_g2rqhHvm4TByki17-klmqjZhpBaKvPICxN2vbmEzn93Pv_bVHK0VjGQ6mP7AZelhCms1B7-mIVOi_dTK7E30A_59_G5YOjsZCWkMBk/s320/640px-Pattaya_transwomen_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Westernization
caused a similar process in many non-western societies, even though
the result were sometimes different. Thailand is typical in that
matter. The kingdom, once a major power, was never colonized but was
nevertheless subject to intense pressures from both France and
Britain and to avoid sharing the fate of its main competitors,
Vietnam and Burma, it adopted a strategy social critic Sulak
Sivaraksa called 'fighting wolves by donning their clothing'. This
included the imposition by the state of western gender roles and
sexual norms, notably a strict differentiation between men and women
– before that, all western travelers insisted on the “masculine”
looks of Thai women, whose dress differed little from the men’s.
Moreover, economic modernization was accompanied by a genderization
of jobs, while in traditional Thai society agricultural work had been
relatively ungendered.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
result has been a polarization of gender roles and norms and the
birth of a special class of transvestites / transgenders who adopted
the behavior and look of western women, or rather what they thought
to be the behavior and look of western women, namely the <i>kathoey</i>.
A similar process occurred in Tonga with the <i>fakaleiti</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
a class of transsexuals / effeminate men who emerged out of a
previous category of men who enjoyed traditionally feminine jobs in
the wake of westernization.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdzNWNFhiNlfAuGX-4sbW6UePQKw1ypXOfhiygeqETsO4qAghy2IY6XNoERIVwAwgSvZL-qzfqj2WrJSPDhXWdjnb00UZ1wVU-7OdDg1ZWwabWrLXw2hwz5mgndVZz1UfNeO7UAOLFvAI/s1600/Woman_spying_on_male_lovers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdzNWNFhiNlfAuGX-4sbW6UePQKw1ypXOfhiygeqETsO4qAghy2IY6XNoERIVwAwgSvZL-qzfqj2WrJSPDhXWdjnb00UZ1wVU-7OdDg1ZWwabWrLXw2hwz5mgndVZz1UfNeO7UAOLFvAI/s320/Woman_spying_on_male_lovers.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Where
things become interesting is that gender roles and norms will likely
be as affected by the energy descent as they were by the birth of
modern western culture or its arrival on such or such far shore, and
so will gayness, or </span><i>kathoey-ness </i><span style="font-style: normal;">for
that matter. It is easy to see why. As the flow of high grade energy
which still keeps our complex societies working dries up, we will be
forced to scale down our economies. This means that our societies
will become a lot less complex and that our economy will focus out of
services toward industry then agriculture. A lot of jobs will simply
disappear and domestic economy will make a big come back. This is
bound to create a shift in gender roles on the same scale as the one
we experienced at the beginning of the modern age or during the
seventies. It is impossible to predict the details of this shift and
it will doubtlessly vary according to local culture and conditions.
The typically western idea that teaching and secretarial work are
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">"</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;">women’s
jobs” may have interesting consequences several centuries down the
road for instance, when a scholarly tradition will have to be revived
by teachers and private secretaries.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM-a7Qn662zEQyNXYx4AxKQWWuIAi_xboqnzQkaJ29nqTj-veW14eJhLrkGXjfT2iBLP6b3BAV93oec7sX63_M4srjBvyb7LapVqPVdAWmYhr-X79dGQTJNDGs4EIXmxOb_BPGsZgi-Fw/s1600/Samarkand_A_group_of_musicians_playing_for_a_bacha_dancing_boy.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM-a7Qn662zEQyNXYx4AxKQWWuIAi_xboqnzQkaJ29nqTj-veW14eJhLrkGXjfT2iBLP6b3BAV93oec7sX63_M4srjBvyb7LapVqPVdAWmYhr-X79dGQTJNDGs4EIXmxOb_BPGsZgi-Fw/s320/Samarkand_A_group_of_musicians_playing_for_a_bacha_dancing_boy.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">What
is certain, however, is that there will be a return to the domestic
economy and that the home, the family and the community will be put
back at the center of the society. After the inevitable demise of the
welfare state – or of its corporate rivals – there will simply
not be no other way to survive rough times. A new repartition of
roles between men and women inside the domestic economy will emerge
and with it new definitions of what it means to be a man or a woman.
These definitions will be based on biology, of course, but there too
there will be considerable variations in time and space.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">It
is unlikely, however, that gayness, as a specific identity, survives
such a shift. Human sexuality </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">being fluid, there will be humans with
homosexual leaning until the extinction of the species, but in a
differently gendered social environment, they will no longer consider
their preferred choice of partner as a fundamental element of their
identity. Basically, gayness will fade with the culture which has
created it.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM-a7Qn662zEQyNXYx4AxKQWWuIAi_xboqnzQkaJ29nqTj-veW14eJhLrkGXjfT2iBLP6b3BAV93oec7sX63_M4srjBvyb7LapVqPVdAWmYhr-X79dGQTJNDGs4EIXmxOb_BPGsZgi-Fw/s1600/Samarkand_A_group_of_musicians_playing_for_a_bacha_dancing_boy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">That
does not mean that homosexual people will be persecuted in the
post-collapse world (even though they may and will be in some areas),
nor that gay marriage will go the way of gay identity. Again it may
and will in some areas, but it is not a necessity. Its main interest
is that it integrates what was previously a deviance into the world
of home and family which will be central in the future.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
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</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbT8BMCMCM8rwMbfhsGs1I6HS73bSpFbErDLxaAX-CpaByCEWe7QcJc23J-hEzeJcmbQMgHedkVvAyJD4t2-uaMNYkwD_tYK76FCBOfwZanxfBCIEhZ5i3bFaFEWamdayF1ii2boIYkE/s1600/Gay_troue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbT8BMCMCM8rwMbfhsGs1I6HS73bSpFbErDLxaAX-CpaByCEWe7QcJc23J-hEzeJcmbQMgHedkVvAyJD4t2-uaMNYkwD_tYK76FCBOfwZanxfBCIEhZ5i3bFaFEWamdayF1ii2boIYkE/s320/Gay_troue.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In
fact it may be this integration which will guarantee the survival of
gay marriage / coupling and the continued acceptance of homosexuals
in some mainstream societies. Separatism of any kind has no place in
a society where community cohesion is literally vital but the
argument cuts both ways. In such a society it would be stupid to
exclude otherwise productive people on the basis of their choice of
partner. Gay marriage may fade away in some culture, but where it
will have become established, it will probably become just marriage,
with all the obligations and responsibilities it entails. Those who
will be excluded, and rightly so because they pose a real threat to
community cohesion, will be promiscuous and adulterous people, no
matter the sex of their targets.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In
a sense, gay marriage is one of the conservative measures we need to
implement if we are to socially cushion the energy descent. Of
course, for the majority of the population it won’t be much, but in
some circumstances, redefining normalcy will enable us to better use
human resources, as well as allowing previously discriminated people
to be productive members of the community, which is by no means
negligible. </span></span>
</div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-2175934266286674962012-10-30T03:52:00.001-07:002012-10-30T03:52:32.977-07:00The importance of handwriting
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnIr9B7KePOhw6KzFwBW8rD-wrpSwAOT6m95aG2NS0ICSyLOCeEpoIvyELzTgGGR1sCWhyf72bB99-LZWD7sf48Y8aJUk00RDAHp-1-ni1S1e-tZyKbfTEXKHv0bPVgLoeO7sEu98lp88/s1600/Bartolomeo_Passarotti_-_Portrait_of_a_scribe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnIr9B7KePOhw6KzFwBW8rD-wrpSwAOT6m95aG2NS0ICSyLOCeEpoIvyELzTgGGR1sCWhyf72bB99-LZWD7sf48Y8aJUk00RDAHp-1-ni1S1e-tZyKbfTEXKHv0bPVgLoeO7sEu98lp88/s320/Bartolomeo_Passarotti_-_Portrait_of_a_scribe.jpg" width="232" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
As
part of my midlife crisis I have taken up calligraphy (along with a
lot of other vices). Like all serious arts, it is trying, hard to
master and demands a lot of practice (and yes, that does mean most of
modern art is just rubbish, but here I am playing captain obvious) .
In fact, it is as much an a craft as art, and one, which requires, if
one wants to reach a real mastery, a reasonably good command of
watercolor or acrylic painting, as well as of drawing. Of course, it
will be a long time before I am able to write a full letter in
insular minuscule, and I will probably never have the skill of XVIIth
century writing masters such as Maria Strick or Jan Van den Velde,
but I feel that learning a craft is a worthwhile effort in and for
itself.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
There
is more to that than merely learning to write in the manner of
medieval Irish monks or of Stuart period writing masters. With the
rise of word processors and printers, penmanship has become an
endangered skill. Writing has been lost in large areas at least twice
in our history : after the late bronze age collapse, when writing
disappeared from both Greece and Anatolia, and the collapse of the
Western Roman Empire, when writing was utterly lost in what is now
England. In both case it was caused by the collapse of the structures
which used writing the most : the palatial economy in Mycenian Greece
and the Roman administration and the Catholic Church in Dark Age
Britain.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgj4T6eOFpEQh37coW_3Yyy75jcBBWZYDvzBgsl6WAu2VrvIRPUrLbCwHkQOMqtqjo-73UqNL6DU_sVB8jJ0xux15Tc2oSYNa3luwkr4ON_JgwVTh1-SQiJiRm-Ovsivxk9QkpMuBLf7w/s1600/480px-Kant_Suetterlin.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgj4T6eOFpEQh37coW_3Yyy75jcBBWZYDvzBgsl6WAu2VrvIRPUrLbCwHkQOMqtqjo-73UqNL6DU_sVB8jJ0xux15Tc2oSYNa3luwkr4ON_JgwVTh1-SQiJiRm-Ovsivxk9QkpMuBLf7w/s320/480px-Kant_Suetterlin.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A text in sütterlin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The
form of writing can also change beyond recognition, sometimes very
quickly. This is what happened in Germany in 1942. Until then Germany
used mostly “German script”, based upon the late medieval Fraktur
and Swabacher styles. The cursive varieties, kurrent and Sütterlin
had grown significantly different from our Latin script, and mutual
intelligibility was, at best, problematic. Then, in 1942, Martin
Borman, probably relaying an order from Hitler banned Fraktur – yes
I know, the idea of Hitler banning “German script” sounds
surrealist, but it’s Hitler we are talking about. Fraktur never
recovered from it and survives today only among Mennonites and Amish.
As a result, contemporary Germans no longer have access to diaries,
books and papers anterior to WWII.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
This
is relevant to the coming energy descent because the form of writing
is highly dependent upon technology. Romans used a brush for
monumental inscriptions and a sharpened reed for books and informal
writings. They also had three distinct scripts. The highly complex
<i>Imperial Majuscule</i> was drawn with a brush, mostly in
monumental inscriptions, while the informal cursive written with a
reed, as was the formal bookhand, the <i>rustica</i>.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The
two things happened. First, Christians designed a rounder specific
script for their writings, the <i>uncial</i>, probably inspired by
Greek. Of course, when the Empire became christian in 313 AD, the
uncial became the <i>de facto</i> standard. Second, as the Empire
collapsed, Western Europe shifted from reeds and papyri to quills and
parchment. While papyrus, being granular, favored angular styles,
parchment allowed for more rounded letters such as the <i>uncial</i>
and its successors such as the <i>insular minuscule</i>, still used
for Gaelic, and the <i>Caroline minuscule</i>, designed by Alcuin of
York, mandated by Charlemagne, to replace the various regional
scripts which had developed in Western Europe after the dislocation
of the Roman Empire.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDGFRil0UIXZNnClQw2iYiDOU9PEOGJ4u_GPzUBDI015Eb7oLtdLveo8HowgESTi1y-ASBgyMYIxdBMl-5HZndS-berZI42WFQ3Jwgc6rFasNm42h2j4CUmyUlmhBk5oiKZgV6NFuIXsg/s1600/BookOfDurrowBeginMarkGospel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDGFRil0UIXZNnClQw2iYiDOU9PEOGJ4u_GPzUBDI015Eb7oLtdLveo8HowgESTi1y-ASBgyMYIxdBMl-5HZndS-berZI42WFQ3Jwgc6rFasNm42h2j4CUmyUlmhBk5oiKZgV6NFuIXsg/s320/BookOfDurrowBeginMarkGospel.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The
<i>Caroline minuscule</i> was a huge success (of course Charlemagne’s
armies helped), but with time it became more and more out of touch
with the needs of a world where literacy was no longer restricted to
monasteries As the dark ages gave way to classical middle age, the
aristocracy became more and more literate and universities were
founded in large cities. There was a growing demand for books on
secular subjects. These books needed to be produced quickly to keep
up with demand. Caroline minuscule, though legible, was
time-consuming and labour-intensive. Its large size consumed a lot of
manuscript space in a time when writing materials were very costly.
Hence the need for a quicker and more compact style.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Black-letters
emerged during the twelfth century to fulfill that need and became
dominant in Germanic countries and northern France, while a specific
script, <i>rotunda</i>, was used in Italy.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
It
was from Italy that came the next revolution, which was by the way,
quite reactionary in nature. At the beginning of the XVth century,
there was, in Italy, a widespread feeling that humanities should
return to the Roman standards – or rather what was thought to be
Roman standards. Reforms were initiated by Petrarch in his 1366
essay, <i>La Scrittura</i>, where he defined the three qualities a
writing style should have :simple (castigata), clear (clara) and
orthographically correct. The trend was continued by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poggio_Bracciolini">Gian
Francesco Poggio Bracciolini</a>, who designed the humanistic hand to
transcribe recovered Latin manuscripts and by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_de%27_Niccoli">Niccolò
de' Niccoli</a>, who transformed it into the quicker italic style,
which was adopted as its official script by the Papal chancery.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ_lRlSAGZjfTbl_rvhuPpsHJA51koh3ybsFIxxJJC4WwWUS3nksz9gGD2E9MvQifu2JoDESILt0Cm446n9-xXmlyVa3IanvNBQfgZlHSzgWlcHc8vvBTifcBq49wYP06nKvZMKJuVAKM/s1600/327px-Book_of_Hours_Bentivoglio_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ_lRlSAGZjfTbl_rvhuPpsHJA51koh3ybsFIxxJJC4WwWUS3nksz9gGD2E9MvQifu2JoDESILt0Cm446n9-xXmlyVa3IanvNBQfgZlHSzgWlcHc8vvBTifcBq49wYP06nKvZMKJuVAKM/s320/327px-Book_of_Hours_Bentivoglio_.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The
invention of printing brought radical things. It made book
manufacturing far easier and, more important, created a sharp divide
between the book industry and the world of handwriting. For printers
legibility was more important than speed of execution, and the clear
humanistic hand soon became the <i>de facto</i> standard, leading to
its adoption by scribes. Those, however, worked now mostly in law,
business and administration and needed a fast, smooth script. This
prompted an evolution of the italic toward rounder, more linked,
script, which led to the creation of the <i>English Round Hand</i> in
XVII<sup>th</sup> century Britain, the basis of modern cursive
writing. This was made possible by a new technology : the pointed
nib. Those were at first hand-crafted from quills, then with the
Industrial Revolution and the progress of metallurgy, mass produced
in steel. This allowed a new writing style, with the contrast of
thick and thin strokes no longer deriving from the angle of the nib
but from the pressure applied to it. The poster child for this was,
of course the <i>Spencerian script</i>, which was the <i>de facto</i>
American business standard until it was displaced by typewriters then
word processors.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
That
is were the problem lies, for the invention of the typewriter, then
of the word processor, then of the portable computer, have
considerably restricted the domain of handwriting, to the point, even
in private writings. This has led to a simplification of cursive
styles and to a de-emphasis of the teaching of cursive handwriting in
many areas. A number of American states have even replaced it by
"keyboard proficiency".</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnZ_6yunX_WLjp3LH6SbtV9VBXYExJR2EaWrLPszn2oCYJI4lj_l2MWaV2skq6QfcMGBMnoiDBNU1_I38H3y5ueKe6JcymjWauy_IGGuUF9-d5DZT1IUvi8jyWRSKbUuun1xMK7VJnEio/s1600/289px-Spencerian_example.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnZ_6yunX_WLjp3LH6SbtV9VBXYExJR2EaWrLPszn2oCYJI4lj_l2MWaV2skq6QfcMGBMnoiDBNU1_I38H3y5ueKe6JcymjWauy_IGGuUF9-d5DZT1IUvi8jyWRSKbUuun1xMK7VJnEio/s320/289px-Spencerian_example.jpg" width="192" /></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
That
would not be a problem if computers were here to stay. After all,
Latin alphabet had undergone considerable changes since its Etruscan
birth and to most of us Roman cursive cursive would look more like
some weird variant of Hebrew than like our familiar "Latin"
script. The problem is that computers will likely prove a transient
technology and so will most of the tool we now use to write.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Computers,
of course, requires a dizzying array of rare materials such as
tantalum, gold or ultra-pure silicon. They also require, to be of of
any use, a continuous supply of electric power. All of these will be
less and less available as the capacity of our society to extract
high grade net energy from their environment. As the crisis deepens,
the infrastructures upon which our computerized society depends will
degrade and the domain of computers will consequently shrink,
probably both socially and geographically.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2hQm6MgqORwidcqGEXyGXrr44SxUtbPuOWoDw44tNG7SXwZ6ef6FUNvai6mzYYy3ZHTOgm53ripUNLmDyG6RUvHuFhsLb5nMa4d8CCmfUNyWHe1YIU_xIoKQLB4qAf7mW5XyZkBCERE4/s1600/The_bookkeeper_by_van_Dijk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Many
of our writing instruments won’t prove more durable, as their
mass-manufacturing requires a sizable industrial base which cannot be
maintained without a continuous inflow of high-grade energy. The
ubiquitous ballpoint pen, for instance, was invented during the early
XXth century, and is based upon the rolling action of a small sphere,
which cannot be manufactured in pre-industrial conditions. You simply
cannot have them without the precision manufacturing capabilities of
XXth century technology.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Steel
nibs, and therefore fountain pens, can be manufactured under
pre-industrial conditions, but certainly not at today’s standards
and certainly not at the same price. Current designs use stainless
steel or gold alloys, which require a relatively large industrial
base for their manufacturing. Of course, one can make them with
normal steel, but they won’t last long, especially if one uses a
corrosive ink, which is likely. They also will be considerably more
expensive and reserved to the elite.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Pencils
are simple and easily manufactured, but they require graphite, which
is not exactly the commonest of material. It is mostly extracted in
China and to make thing worse, it has to be beneficiated to be
useful, which, without industrial acids or grinding machines, means
crushing and screening the ore... by hand. This will make graphite
almost as expensive as its crystallized <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond">cousin</a>.
There is only one place of the world were you can find directly
usable graphite : Borrowdale in Cumbria, England. That is why the
pencil industry was born in nearby Keswick. That is also why during
the Napoleonic wars, the French couldn’t find a high quality pencil
to save their life and had to rely on substitutes made of powdered
graphite mixed with clay. Those may be available in the
de-industrialized future, but don’t expect them to be cheap.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2hQm6MgqORwidcqGEXyGXrr44SxUtbPuOWoDw44tNG7SXwZ6ef6FUNvai6mzYYy3ZHTOgm53ripUNLmDyG6RUvHuFhsLb5nMa4d8CCmfUNyWHe1YIU_xIoKQLB4qAf7mW5XyZkBCERE4/s1600/The_bookkeeper_by_van_Dijk.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2hQm6MgqORwidcqGEXyGXrr44SxUtbPuOWoDw44tNG7SXwZ6ef6FUNvai6mzYYy3ZHTOgm53ripUNLmDyG6RUvHuFhsLb5nMa4d8CCmfUNyWHe1YIU_xIoKQLB4qAf7mW5XyZkBCERE4/s320/The_bookkeeper_by_van_Dijk.jpg" width="252" /></a>That
means that in 100 years from now we may be back to reeds and quills,
which will have a dramatic effect upon our style of writing. Add to
that the fact that most modern ink will go with the chemical industry
and will have to be replaced by carbon (read sooth) based inks or the
more permanent, but potentially corrosive, gall iron ink. Neither
work very well with modern pens, of course. In fact, gall iron ink
will destroy most of them.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
As
computers become too expensive to be used for private then
administrative writings, handwriting will make a comeback. Printing
is probably here to stay, as its principles are relatively simple to
master, even if the details are more complex. It is impractical for
anything but book-making, however, and everything else will have to
be done by hand. By that time, of course, the society will probably
have drastically simplified, so the warlords of the salvage societies
will only have to keep a few secretaries around, not a whole
bureaucracy of them.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Where
things become interesting is that those secretaries will be the
product of the computer and printer age, when only 15 percent of
american students wrote their essay answers in cursive, and only 12
percent of american teachers reported having taken a course in how to
teach it. Their writing style will most likely derive from block
letters (basically <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanistic_minuscule">humanistic
minuscule</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_square_capitals">imperial
capitals</a>) transformed for speed and easiness, with probably
considerable regional variations, making all old handwritten
documents illegible. If the presumably shrunken printing industry
follows, a large a part of our heritage, including important but not
immediately useful scientific or technical information, will be made
inaccessible.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
This
is why penmanship, even though it is by nature an evolutive craft,
should be preserved, as a hobby in present conditions. Thus, when
penmanship becomes a marketable skill again and a new writing
tradition develops anew, it will be based, at least in some areas,
upon the tradition which brought us up from the monastic uncial to
the round hand people of my generation have been taught at school.
That will keep a bridge to the past open for the future societies
when they will go out of the coming dark age and develop their own
modernity.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
We
can no longer save our civilization, but keeping a part of its
heritage may be a worthwhile endeavor.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-51366900266667962792012-09-30T08:07:00.000-07:002012-10-02T01:14:09.619-07:00A few words about education<style type="text/css">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1wT3EARRL-csXQkmQT8pixXxRlBfuzCcB9ZEp9xSN2QCfA_kYxd2PzMVrKjHIkfZNRPYMRMoOb8IxVRrkQziVMLj8UiK4CN7FtQ7UbMh6KTtMiX__aHlcDpz_uuW8dPcdam8d5nXe6E/s1600/Raban-Maur_Alcuin_Otgar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1wT3EARRL-csXQkmQT8pixXxRlBfuzCcB9ZEp9xSN2QCfA_kYxd2PzMVrKjHIkfZNRPYMRMoOb8IxVRrkQziVMLj8UiK4CN7FtQ7UbMh6KTtMiX__aHlcDpz_uuW8dPcdam8d5nXe6E/s320/Raban-Maur_Alcuin_Otgar.jpg" width="311" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There are
two major school networks in France, and a large number of minor
ones. Public Schools (écoles publique), also called Secular Schools
(écoles laïques), are state run and free (as in free beer). In most
areas, they are the default schools and their quality is highly
dependent upon their localization. Some, in suburban ghettos for
instance, are dreadful, others, such as Henri IV in Paris or
Clémenceau in Nantes, are elite institutions, on par with the best
British public schools can offer.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Normally,
the school you go to is determined by the place you live in, but, of
course, there are ways to game the system, for instance by choosing
rare languages. It was common knowledge in my (pretty average) high
school, that those learning Russian (and later Latin) would be put in
a “good class”.For the record, I learned Russian, mostly because
most of my schoolmates chose English and I felt contrarian.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Private
Schools, also called Free Schools (as in free speech) are run by the
Catholic Church. They are particularly numerous in Western France and
in a few area they are the only available ones. They are emphatically
not free (as in free beer) but the fee is generally within the means
of the average French working class family. They were originally
created to provide their pupils with a Catholic education, and
religion is still a part of the curriculum, but for most people, they
are merely a higher quality alternative to the public system. If they
are numerous in Brittany, even in a working class city such as my
native Saint-Nazaire, it is, of course because the region used to be
a stronghold of the Catholic Faith, but also because Bretons tend to
invest more heavily in the education of their children and are more
willing to pay for it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ironically,
Catholic schools are more open to religious minorities than secular
schools. Most are under contract with the State, which pays the wages
of the teachers, and must welcome all children, whatever their
religion, which in practice means that a veiled Muslim girl’s is
better off in a catholic school than in a secular school where
showing one’s religion is likely to get you expelled.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifUYKMMwpXcsDemSxYe6GJuED6qgR9519haFbZ5nGgu44QmwSeX_cO4nzf-fvpE2bthVgnw-umBKQJT-AAladR-4v_sZFeqsAb1f2N6lthnwz_7AGtJIOv6BUR8RHdwxCYVUvl7r7pNuc/s1600/640px-Anker_Die_Dorfschule_von_1848_1896.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhay_iPCQpRvwQhRQ648YGHIqVUj1tBIXmXV651DSs8uM3fWtlntyIJ-fD0EaCevAhaEDxQ7teimIJt0xk4hphDnxdcaMBRoeHtChsIOne7mwO9PIwSJh4S1Aevz14uGed8_WB8lptcRkw/s1600/640px-Polytechnique_1er_carre_Bastille_Day_2008.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhay_iPCQpRvwQhRQ648YGHIqVUj1tBIXmXV651DSs8uM3fWtlntyIJ-fD0EaCevAhaEDxQ7teimIJt0xk4hphDnxdcaMBRoeHtChsIOne7mwO9PIwSJh4S1Aevz14uGed8_WB8lptcRkw/s320/640px-Polytechnique_1er_carre_Bastille_Day_2008.jpg" width="320" /></a>Universities
are mostly public and secular – there are only seven Catholic
universities in the whole of France. There is however a clear
dichotomy between universities and the so called <i>great schools</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
In France, university is relatively cheap and open to anybody who has
graduated from high school. French universities are however
chronically overcrowded, underfunded</span> and understaffed and a
significant percentage of the students drop out in the first couple
of years. This is a feature, not a bug. Despite what politicians
regularly say, the mission of the university is emphatically not to
train the elite of the nation. This is the job of the Great Schools,
a collection of specialized, mostly state run, institutions such as
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique">Polytechnique</a>,
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_d%27%C3%89tudes_Politiques_de_Paris">Science-Po</a>,
or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEC_Paris">HEC</a>. Those
schools are not necessarily expensive but they are highly selective,
so selective, in fact, there are specialized preparatory classes, the
only purpose of which is to get you ready to <i>try</i> to enter
them. Those classes are themselves highly selective (I got admitted
in one of them, but due to some administrative SNAFU, I was the only
candidate from Saint-Nazaire. It helped) and the workload is hellish.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Similar
system evolved during the nineteenth century at around the same time
in all European state, from reactionary Prussia to supposedly
enlightened France and Britain, and of course the reasons for that
had nothing to do with humanitarianism. Thanks to an ever growing
supply of cheap energy, the advanced societies of the time created a
lot middle management jobs, something earlier cultures simply could
not afford. Those jobs could not be filled by illiterate peasants,
hence the necessity for the western European countries which wanted
to compete in the new international environment to invest heavily in
education.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1437377958282996862" name="firstHeading"></a><span lang="en-US">The
school I studied at, for instance, was created after the
Franco-Prussian war because a leading industrialist, </span>Émile
Boutmy, felt that Frenchmen kind of underperformed in political
sciences... and that It might have had a part in the recent and
somewhat embarrassing presence of Prussian soldiers in the Loire
Valley.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Things were more
complicated in France, however, because of the conflict between the
republicans , heirs to the 1789 revolution, and the monarchist who,
albeit they had accepted the inevitability of a constitutional
regime, sill nurtured the nostalgia of the <i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ancien
Régime.</span></i>The Church openly favored the latter ones, which
caused the republican left to become more and more anticlerical.
After the overthrow of Napoleon the Third and the failure of the
royalists to reinstate monarchy, the Republicans became dominant and
fought a long ideological battle against the Church.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhay_iPCQpRvwQhRQ648YGHIqVUj1tBIXmXV651DSs8uM3fWtlntyIJ-fD0EaCevAhaEDxQ7teimIJt0xk4hphDnxdcaMBRoeHtChsIOne7mwO9PIwSJh4S1Aevz14uGed8_WB8lptcRkw/s1600/640px-Polytechnique_1er_carre_Bastille_Day_2008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF7cw8D2pQ3af95hPhbEa_-PNybeGQdzR3ReICwzGHlMdG0l6L3PZVriQcT5B6i9WCHdx2M6AIrgYUzf4be6dDkvmNrR199Al0k3mdGPV8Vbojv3Nv56n0EaepH0KIORm2Uxkxc7ZdwEg/s1600/545px-Le_Rire_-_S%C3%A9paration_de_l'Eglise_et_de_l'Etat.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF7cw8D2pQ3af95hPhbEa_-PNybeGQdzR3ReICwzGHlMdG0l6L3PZVriQcT5B6i9WCHdx2M6AIrgYUzf4be6dDkvmNrR199Al0k3mdGPV8Vbojv3Nv56n0EaepH0KIORm2Uxkxc7ZdwEg/s320/545px-Le_Rire_-_S%C3%A9paration_de_l'Eglise_et_de_l'Etat.jpg" width="290" /></a>School was one of
the main battlefields. France had, since the Falloux laws in 1851, a
weird dual system, with some schools run by the states and some run
by the Church. All were under the supervision of both the mayor and
the <i>commune's</i> priest, and a large place was given to the
representatives of the three main religions in supervisory bodies. In
1881 and 1882, however, the republican (and imperialist) Jules Ferry
created a entirely state-run, free, mandatory and secular system. The
state and the (Catholic) Church were separated in 1905, which started
a protracted war between the "Devil's
School" and the "School
of Lies" for the young Frenchmen's
hearts and minds.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This war lasted
until 1983 when the newly elected socialist government tried to
create a “big unified secular public service of education",
which would have put private schools under the tutelage of the state.
The Church successfully mobilized and after a mass demonstration in
Paris, President Mitterrand decided to call the whole thing a day and
to fire the Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After
that the "war of the schools" essentially disappeared from
French politics . Fringe atheist groups may rant about “anti-secular
laws” and Catholic fundamentalists run fringe schools where one
teaches that democracy is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.
Most people, however, don’t care, and rightly so, for the real
victor of the war has been neither secular civic spirit nor
Christianity.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After World War
II, Western European nations underwent a period of rapid growth, in
a great part thanks to American oil and resources. This caused an
equally rapid complexification of their societies and the creation of
a lot of middle management jobs. As a consequence, the number of
university students exploded, something the until then rather rigid
institution was not ready for. Many of those new students were of
peasant or working class background and many adopted one or another
of the leftist ideologies which were in fashion at the time –
maoism was particularly popular in France, even though Trotskism was
a close second – while leading the same hedonistic and bohemian lifestyle as
all students since François Villon. This led to the may 1968
pseudo-revolution, when Parisian students took to the street and
occupied the Sorbonne because they were denied access to the girls’
dormitory (yes, no kidding, that’s how it began). They threatened
for a time General De Gaulle’s regime, then found out that
Frenchmen were not interested in a free love utopia when the
government recovered from its initial shock and rallied its
supporters.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The maoist groups
lingered until the eighties, a few student leaders acquired a lasting
fame, most notably <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Cohn-Bendit">Daniel
Cohn-Bendit</a>, but the most lasting result of the 1968 events has
been the the invasion of the school system by the hedonistic,
utilitarian and materialist ideology of the upper middle class. This
invasion was progressive, of course, and teachers, as a group, are
still marked by the republican ideology – in the original,
philosophical, meaning of the term. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Their resistance
is more and more ineffective, however. From the mid-eighties onward,
ironically when the Socialist Party got into power, schools was seen
less and less as a tool to train citizens and more and more as a way
to choose elites and train workers according to the needs of the
economy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxRtMRmHYsPsE75kyk9P8-XBh7mR05EYb4xCZFsLpKjtH20PUQ37REpCaBJvRtkopNARubLHSdXlS-GdaUTHmoITKw8H8PYIxTUnzToQjiKHt3oLPdzj8jGLictMBcsp8wm7uRwtLnbz8/s1600/Rachida-Dati-European-Parliament.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxRtMRmHYsPsE75kyk9P8-XBh7mR05EYb4xCZFsLpKjtH20PUQ37REpCaBJvRtkopNARubLHSdXlS-GdaUTHmoITKw8H8PYIxTUnzToQjiKHt3oLPdzj8jGLictMBcsp8wm7uRwtLnbz8/s320/Rachida-Dati-European-Parliament.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is a
particularly perverse evolution because, as Chistopher Lasch
demonstrated, social mobility is a poor substitute for democracy. It
does not question the supremacy of elites but actually promotes it.
The fact that a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachida_Dati">woman
of Muslim background</a> became minister of justice in France will
bring little comfort to another woman of Muslim background working
part time for misery wages in a suburban supermarket. It can even
make her plight harder to bear. As a woman and a Muslim, she will be
told to consider Rachida Dati’s success as somehow her own (and
therefore please shut up when Rachida Dati’s decisions harm her).
Besides, the meritocratic mythology will brand her as a failure while
legitimizing the power of the elites and justifying the said elites’
contempt for the common people.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We are light-years
away from the democratic ideal, which postulates that all citizen are
of equal worth and can have an equal say in public affairs.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The irony is that
this happened just as France, and most other western European
countries, began to develop a chronic case of mass unemployment. The
global EROEI of our society had begun to decline, and unlike the
United States, we couldn’t compensate by extracting more resources
from our vassals. The supply of high-paying jobs suddenly dried up
and the competition for those left intensified. Connections and
ability to game the system (yours or your family’s) became crucial
and the rift between the professional class and the rest of of the
population became to widen again.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This trend is
bound to continue. As the amount of energy available to society
shrinks, the upper classes will fight to keep their privileges, which
means driving everybody beneath them into permanent poverty. Chances
are that they will use various kind of affirmative action to
legitimize this power and resource grabbing operation – in fact
they have already begun – and invest resources into elite
replacement through education rather than in something really useful.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As our resources
dwindles, so will our capacity to support not only parasitic elites,
such as Wall Street traders or bankers, but also useful ones such as
engineers or scientist. Our focus will have to change from building
to maintaining, and for that we need the kind of skill that
apprenticeship, not classroom, can teach.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifUYKMMwpXcsDemSxYe6GJuED6qgR9519haFbZ5nGgu44QmwSeX_cO4nzf-fvpE2bthVgnw-umBKQJT-AAladR-4v_sZFeqsAb1f2N6lthnwz_7AGtJIOv6BUR8RHdwxCYVUvl7r7pNuc/s1600/640px-Anker_Die_Dorfschule_von_1848_1896.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifUYKMMwpXcsDemSxYe6GJuED6qgR9519haFbZ5nGgu44QmwSeX_cO4nzf-fvpE2bthVgnw-umBKQJT-AAladR-4v_sZFeqsAb1f2N6lthnwz_7AGtJIOv6BUR8RHdwxCYVUvl7r7pNuc/s320/640px-Anker_Die_Dorfschule_von_1848_1896.jpg" width="320" /></a>We also need civic
culture – what Montesquieu called virtue – if we don’t want the
coming decline to be far more messy and bloody than it needs to be.
That can, and must, be taught in classrooms through the study of
history, literature, philosophy and sport – in short the classical
education of your average Imperial British boarding schools. The
purpose of such a curriculum would not be to teach marketable skills
but to train citizens and provide them with the frame of common
values and references they need to constitute themselves in a true
civic body – and effectively contest the supremacy of whatever
elite claims the right to rule at any particular time.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, it
remains to be seen whether collapsing societies can afford this kind
of schools. They certainly won't be able to support such clumsy
behemoths as the French <i>Éducation Nationale</i> but both Song
China and Tokugawa Japan had extensive school networks and a high
level of litteracy. Medieval Europe, with its (generally literate),
village priests might have achieved the same result, if it had had
the will.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On the long run, I
fear it is this will, which will be lacking. Teachers, who have
mostly become bureaucrats, have no reason to decentralize the system
they live off, and elites little incentive to educate into
citizenship the people the claim intellectual supremacy over.
Schooling is therefore likely to remain focused on the training of
cranks for a global economic machine peak energy has already doomed,
and civic education likely to be more and more limited to the
indoctrination of "correct thinking".</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This kind of
education system is bound to become more and more irrelevant as the
crisis deepens and people are forced to acquire survival skills and
it is easy to envision a point when it will be restricted to an elite
– a process, which is well advanced in some African countries. When
this elite will fall, and it will fall, what will be left of our
education system will go the way of Roman rhetoric schools. Only
those groups, which need their members to be formally educated –
the equivalents of the medieval Church or the Britto-Roman bardic
orders – will maintain educational structures.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In some areas,
that may mean nobody at all if local communities don't take the
matter in their own hands.</span></div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-80049761726220604832012-08-27T01:44:00.000-07:002012-08-28T07:37:33.673-07:00From Russia with narcissism<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
</div>
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<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Summer
months tend to be quite uneventful in France. We have earned the
right to go on extended leaves in 1936 and consider it somewhat
sacred, so everything is put on hold in July and August. The world
feels no obligation, however, to follow French mores and two major
events have happened during the last months, which triggered a number
of quite revealing reactions, or non-reactions.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
First
you had this strike in a platinum mine in South-Africa, which got
seriously out of hand and ended with the police shooting 34 miners
dead. Then there was this trial in Russia, where three musicians from
a rather obscure Riot Grrrl band got sentenced to two years in a
prison colony for having staged an impromptu happening in the middle
of the largest church in Moscow. Curiously, or perhaps not so
curiously, Pussy Riot got a lot of support in Western countries with
a lot of people demonstrating in front of Russian consulates and
embassies – well, maybe not a lot, but they sure as hell got a lot
of media time. Strangely, South-African consulates and embassies have
remained stubbornly demonstrator-free.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The
funny thing is what Pussy Riot did is also an offense in France.
France is a adamantly secular state, yet, when in 2005 Act Up staged
a fake gay marriage in the largest church of Paris, well, let’s say
that the French courts were not amused.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The
<i>Tribunal of Grande Instance</i> of Paris thus said it was a
direct attack against freedom of religion as defined by the article 9
of the European Convention on Human Rights. It also said that it was
irrelevant that the stated aim of the action was not to attack
religion as such but to protest against a particular policy.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="en-US">Of
course, the French sentence was symbolic, mostly because the Catholic
Church did not push for more. Russia has been too harsh in my
opinion, yet the logic behind the law against </span><span lang="en-US">"</span><span lang="en-US">hooliganism”,
defined in Russian law as </span><span lang="en-US">"</span><span lang="en-US">a
gross violation of public order which expresses patent contempt for
society” is quite similar to the French </span><span lang="en-US"><i>Tribunal
of Grande Instance’s. </i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">Indeed,
last time I checked freedom of religion was one of the founding
principles of liberal society, and that certainly includes the right
to worship undisturbed. When you think about it, it is not that
different either from the logic behind the recently passed </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>Honoring
America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">,
which will send you in jail if you have the dubious idea of
protesting the funerals of a veteran.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">There
is more in this affair than a few </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>bobos</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
showing off their usual double standard. It has real implications for
the coming energy descent, notably for what concerns the defense and
furthering of functional communities. Communities are crucial to our
getting through the energy descent in any reasonable shape.
Bureaucratic forms of solidarity such as the French </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>Sécurité
Sociale</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">,
are bound to fail in an environment where the net energy available
to society, and therefore its ability to mobilize resources
structurally dwindles.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
only way to preserve some kind of safety net for those in need is by
relying on organic community solidarity. Community solidarity can
greatly vary in form, from Anglo-saxon fraternal societies to Islamic
Zaqat, It comes with a price, however, a human price. Unlike networks
– the kind of socialization favored by the elites – which put
together people similar to each other, communities, in a reasonably
complex societies, are made up of people with divergent, and
sometimes highly divergent, values, interests, characters and
life-goals. To get along, we need a basic set of common values,
according to which we not only can but also must judge people –
what Georges Orwell called </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>common
decency</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">,
this feeling , common to all men that there are things which simply
cannot be done to fellow humans.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
We
need also an understanding that there are things which are both
important and private, such as the choice of your life-partner or the
way you worship whatever you have chosen to worship – provided, of
course, those choices stay within the bounds of common decency, what
pedophilia and Aztec-like human sacrifices don't, by the way.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
It
was those two principles Pussy Riot trampled with their, rather lame
by the way, church dancing, and this, as well as the support they
got, tells a lot about the way our elites see community.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Political
philosophers distinguish between two kinds of liberty, which Isaiah
Berlin calls respectively positive and negative liberties. Positive
liberty, which is derived from Aristotle's definition of citizenship,
is basically self-mastery, the right to choose one's own government
and to have a say its policies, which, of course, implies a full
participation in the political life of the community. Negative
liberty is the right to act without interference by other persons.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Being
a liberal, Isaiah Berlin argued that positive liberty was quite
vulnerable to abuse by would-be philosopher-kings who conflated
positive liberty with rational action, based upon a rational
knowledge to which, only a certain elite or social group had access.
Even a cursory look at the history of the last two centuries shows he
was quite right in doing so. What he failed to see was that positive
liberty could be similarly abused to serve the interests of such or
such social group.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
This
is what I call the sadian interpretation of liberty.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">Donatien
Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat
philosopher and writer of the late XVIII</span></span><sup><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">th</span></span></sup><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
century, and for those who wonder, yes, the similarity of his name
with the word sadism is not entirely coincidental. Sade is best known
as a novelist, his most important work being </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>The
120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinism</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">.
In it, he describes the “adventures” of four “libertines”who
seal themselves in a castle with a harem of sex-slaves of both
genders and then proceed to rape, torture and murder them.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Needless
to say, Sade spent a lot of time in jail and died in an asylum.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">Sade,
an educated man, was also a philosopher and wrote a number of
political texts, the most important of which being an insert in his
novel </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>Philosophy
in the Bedroom</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
titled </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>"Yet
Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans"</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">.
His thesis in this short piece was that egoism, greed, violence and
lust were part of human nature and should therefore be indulged
without any interference by other persons. Sade even denies the
community the right to regulate in any way the behavior of his
members, saying “ Demanding that men unequal in character submit to
equal laws is frightening : what goes for one, does not work for
another” and : "Laws can be so soft, and so few, that all men,
whatever their character, can submit to them”.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">And
if you open </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>The
120 days</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">,
you'll quickly realize that </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>whatever
their character</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
includes Jeffrey Dahmer's.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Of
course, you can't base an healthy community on such premises, and no
political thinker I know of have followed him in his serial-killer
oriented theory of liberty. The assumption behind it, however,
thrives in every social group which manages to insulate itself from
the community as well as from the consequences of their own behavior.
This was certainly the case of Sade's own social group : the French
aristocracy. This is also the case of not only the various elites
which lord over our civilization, but also of a significant part of
the “bobo” upper middle class.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">That
doesn't mean that there is some elite conspiracy to replay the </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>120
days</i></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">
in a Carpathian castle, mind you, only that as they isolate
themselves from the rest of us, those the current arrangements favor
begin to consider themselves above the rules of common decency. This
leads not only to Madoff running his scheme or Dominique Strauss-Kahn
organizing orgies in a very select French hotel, but also to CEOs
giving themselves totally indecent wages while the firm they run goes
under, or Wall Street traders causing people to lose their jobs, or
even to starve, to make a few dollars more... or a riot grrrl band
trampling religious freedom just to make a political point.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;">And please note I am emphatically not a Christian.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The
members of Pussy Riot are hardly proles. One is a computer
programmer, the two others are students, and apparently not the
starving kind. One of them is even a Canadian permanent resident and
their activism revolves around the kind of societal issues which
enable the bobos to feel good without endangering their privileges.
They represent the Sadian tendencies within occidental upper middle
classes who want to enjoy their hedonistic, community dissolving,
lifestyle, without having to bother about such petty things as the
rights of others.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The
South-African miners, on the other hands are just ordinary,
presumably decent, workers trying to feed their families the best
they can and demanding a better salary for what is after all one of
the most difficult and dangerous jobs in the world. They have no
access to any cultural circle or any upper middle class network. Many
speak only their (Bantu) native language and they don't understand
modern art. Let's face it, they are quite boring. They represent
common people, whith common hopes and common decency.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Personally,
I would have sentenced Pussy Riot to long and harsh community
service. That is not the problem, however. The problem is that as the
net energy available to our societies shrinks, so will their ability
to support large elites and middle classes. That means that a
significant part of those shall lose their privileges and that the
rest will secede ever more from the society they live off, becoming
more and more ferocious in the defense of their interests while using
various societal issues to convince themselves they are enlightened.
They will be able to keep their affluent lifestyle in a shrinking
economy only by pressuring ever more the working classes and pushing
them ever further into poverty and precarity. To continue to feel
good in such circumstances they will have to shift the definition of
social progress until it includes only what betters the lot of their
class.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The
focus on Pussy Riot and away from the pile of corpses in South-Africa
is a step more in this direction.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
This
is a self-defeating strategy, and one which can have drastic
consequences. The populace, looking the intelligentsia using what
amounts to navel-gazing to justify the defense of their privileges,
will be more and more tempted to throw the baby with the bathwater
and turn to authoritarian solutions to save them from liberalism.
Genuine advances, such as considering gays as human beings or
allowing anybody to speak one's mind in the street or in papers, will
be jeopardized.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
A
lot may be lost because the intelligentsia prefers to clamor about
the woes of a not so innocent punk band than about the murder of
ordinary decent people.</div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-3748804137242738022012-08-11T09:02:00.001-07:002012-08-11T09:02:44.920-07:00Fascination for death<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2po361fKNvs9t5CA-FktLz1JeNAxclfRADFuCuAMPE0pUwx2xUkih1Q0tdbISUwMrEp4DHQt0aJJObrshb_DCns3ouflBy2wTaMNVvOhS0XB_HWcgE6vdIQ1Ssw0m2bnSKqoNOQDp4T8/s1600/Camprobin-el_caballero_y_la_muerte.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2po361fKNvs9t5CA-FktLz1JeNAxclfRADFuCuAMPE0pUwx2xUkih1Q0tdbISUwMrEp4DHQt0aJJObrshb_DCns3ouflBy2wTaMNVvOhS0XB_HWcgE6vdIQ1Ssw0m2bnSKqoNOQDp4T8/s320/Camprobin-el_caballero_y_la_muerte.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We are a
peculiar culture. We are extremely reluctant to accept the
possibility that our civilization might decline and fall, like all
those which have preceded us, yet consider the idea of utterly
trashing the biosphere with a fascination which would have made an
early twentieth century symbolist uneasy. We have had another example
of it with a <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html">paper</a>
published in the June issue of Nature.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
paper itself is quite serious. The authors' thesis is that our
dumping loads of CO<sub>2</sub> into the atmosphere will cause Earth
to undergo a state-shift, that is, that the climate of the planet
will, abruptly, become something totally different. It is quite
possible. In fact, given our remarkable ability to do nothing to make
our lifestyle more sustainable, it is quite likely.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
problem is the way it was relayed. Thus, in the (highly reputable)
French paper Les Echos, we could read <a href="http://www.lesechos.fr/opinions/analyses/0202171668454-la-fin-du-monde-en-2100-347602.php"><i>La
fin du monde en 2100 ?</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,</span></a><span style="font-style: normal;">
which translates as </span><i>The End of the World in 2100 ?</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
The idea is that the change will be so dramatic and so brutal, that
life will be unable to adapt and we will be left with with a warmer
version of Mars.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVocXqMwjiH_UmC4JYTlKhCPgfmV43YXGRZz3ERxq6euw5extnyYPgUtfssUM8_e7d6XS6eRPLQrcb_nZnuA-cfGNjLSjlNpioUEuIYQu6rI3Cseea-Veb-cYlZ7x5gHkAPL3wlCUiE94/s1600/600px-Inostrancevia_4DB.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVocXqMwjiH_UmC4JYTlKhCPgfmV43YXGRZz3ERxq6euw5extnyYPgUtfssUM8_e7d6XS6eRPLQrcb_nZnuA-cfGNjLSjlNpioUEuIYQu6rI3Cseea-Veb-cYlZ7x5gHkAPL3wlCUiE94/s320/600px-Inostrancevia_4DB.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">At
this point, it may be interesting to go back a bit in time, say 250
millions years. Then most</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">land masses were collected in a single
super-continent, which, like most super-continents erred on the dry
side. This did not keep, mostly reptilian, life from thriving, with
such specimens as</span><i> inostrancevia</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
a bear-sized reptile with 12 cm long saber-teeth. The vegetation was
not exactly lush but there were still vast expenses of forests,
mostly in the south.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">It
was not a paradise, especially if you stumbled on a </span><i>inostrancevia
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">in a dark wood in the middle of
the night, but it was a functional world, with functional ecosystems.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Then,
everything which could possibly go wrong did.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">A
magma plume burst through what would become Siberia, burning through
the largest coal seam of the time. The Siberian traps, as they are
cold, covered 2 millions km² with lava and released an embarrassing
surplus CO2 into the atmosphere – enough to raise global
temperatures by 5°C. This was enough to destabilize oceanic methane
clathrate, send a lot of methane into the atmosphere and turn an
already hot and dry world into something reminiscent of Arakis.</span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwl608KjajAECWfA7puiFs6u2muDnoYJJMrCiDwaGke4zWSqt4z-B3yL4s7KZsEhjBoOIoXDwdYP6798WT3JYzWQOeHhhNvjDrVv_TayxmXC1cqT18SFd2FcASqjdgesqKYVNKniWkga4/s1600/0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwl608KjajAECWfA7puiFs6u2muDnoYJJMrCiDwaGke4zWSqt4z-B3yL4s7KZsEhjBoOIoXDwdYP6798WT3JYzWQOeHhhNvjDrVv_TayxmXC1cqT18SFd2FcASqjdgesqKYVNKniWkga4/s320/0.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span><span style="clear: right; float: right; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The oceans became severely deficient in oxygen, but unfortunately not quite dead. Its normal
inhabitants were just replaced by hydrogen sulfide producing
bacteria. The oxygen level in the atmosphere plummeted, making life
quite difficult for those few animals which had not been baked to
death.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Yet
life could survive in a overheated desert bordered by a steaming
ocean and surrounded by a poisoned atmosphere, and did.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Hard
as we try, we can't even get close to the disaster that was the Great
Dying, as the Late Permian extinction is called. The best – or
rather the worst – we can expect is a speedy return to the hothouse
conditions that were the norm during most of Earth's history.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">It
may comes as a surprise for most of you, but our planet is going
through an ice age, an unusually cold and dry period, with a low
biodiversity. The climate has been getting colder and colder for the
last 30 million years and had the trend continued, we would have been
headed toward a full-fledged glacial period, a few tens of thousands
years from now. It seems we'll get a swamp and jungle world instead,
with some deserts as well, and a lot of shallow seas. It will be
teeming with life, probably more so than ours.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Of
course, a lot of species will disappear during the transition, like
at the end of the last glacial period or during the Paleocene–Eocene
Thermal Maximum. Others will prosper, as did our ancestors at the
beginning of the Eocene.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
problem, is that most crops we are dependent upon have evolved in a
Mediterranean setting and won't fare well in the new environment, not
to speak, naturally of the slow invasion of the lowlands by the sea.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We
won”t be able to use our usual strategy of social complexification
and investment into technology. We don't have the resources we need
to face the situation this way, even today, just after what was
probably the peak of our power and richness. With the beginning of
the energy descent our capacity to make investments to face such or
such emergency while keeping our infrastructures in working order
will shrink. At some point, we will probably be obliged to dismantle
vital infrastructures, or allow them to decay, to free the resources
we desperately need to keep short term crisis from spiraling out of
control.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">One
can even argue that it is what is happening right now with the slow
unraveling of the welfare state and the shrinking of public services
in Europe.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
only strategy which will work in the long run is the one our
ancestors used before the European expansion : cultural
diversification and local adaptation. Since local conditions will
have changed nearly everywhere, that means hat all cultures will have
to reshape themselves, probably beyond recognition.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">And
yes, that is also true for so-called traditional or tribal cultures.
After all, you cannot stay seal hunting Inuits if your glaciers have
turned into alpine meadows and pine forests. You can, however, become
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Kalaallisut
speaking herders and fishers.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">But
Inuit culture will be essentially dead, as will be all other modern
cultures.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
is probably because, as a civilization we somehow feel this, that we
have such a fascination for death, a fascination which manifests
itself through zombies and vampire movies as well as through Les
Echos's apocalyptic vision of a lifeless Earth. We, as a
civilization, feel that something, big, and dark, and terrible is
coming. We don't know what it is, we don't know when it will strike,
but strike it will and it will destroy everything in its wake, a
destruction we both fear and relish.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRmEiAokVllVbqaIYSuen5nsIUWXlHLZb12cPSQiAn3YpqqJw-CiokM-4uCQ-XidrwtCkCmP-9Di9fRi34LGy_RQvlhEVRY_fWwUXVedtSkoeGoxPrKVDvNLl_MXmgB7-M-kal58pqqcE/s1600/640px-Kustodiev_The_Bolshevik.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRmEiAokVllVbqaIYSuen5nsIUWXlHLZb12cPSQiAn3YpqqJw-CiokM-4uCQ-XidrwtCkCmP-9Di9fRi34LGy_RQvlhEVRY_fWwUXVedtSkoeGoxPrKVDvNLl_MXmgB7-M-kal58pqqcE/s320/640px-Kustodiev_The_Bolshevik.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
is not an unprecedented feeling. It was particularly widespread in
the Russian intelligentsia before 1914. The country was rapidly
industrializing and while the countryside was still backward, a
modern middle class was growing in the cities, as well as a
radicalizing working class which would latter swell the ranks of the
Red Guards during the October putsch.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Yet
the government was controlled by an aristocratic clique headed by a
brutal – and incompetent – autocrat right from the XVII</span></span></span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">th</span></span></span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
century. The contradiction was so glaring that it was obvious to
everybody that something was to happen. Few if any people expected
this something to take the form of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, but
most felt that it would be destructive, and many welcomed this coming
destruction, not as a renewal, but for itself.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Thus,
the poet Alexander Blok exclaimed after hearing about the sinking of
the Titanic : “the ocean is alive !”. In case you wonder, it was
an expression of joy.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In
one of his latter poems, The Twelve, written in January 1918, where
he describes the bloody march of twelve red guards as a mystical
event, the same Alexander Blok writes : </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Crack
~ crack ~ crack! <br />Crack ~ crack ~ crack! <br />... So they march
with sovereign tread ... <br />Behind them limps the hungry dog, <br />and
wrapped in wild snow at their head <br />carrying a blood-red flag ~
<br />soft-footed where the blizzard swirls, <br />invulnerable where
bullets crossed ~ <br />crowned with a crown of snowflake pearls, <br />a
flowery diadem of frost, <br />ahead of them goes Jesus Christ. </span></span></i>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
problem is that where Blok took a pen, others took a gun and acted
out on these necrophiliac tendencies, leading to both the Bolshevik
hell and the Nazi death cult. It is perfectly possible that the
present fascination with death leads to similar results – similar,
not identical, Nazism and Communism are spent forces but the impulses
behind them are well alive.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
is easy to imagine a radical movement emerging from those apocalyptic
fantasies and promising to exorcise them by bringing about the same
kind of storm which engulfed early twentieth century Russia. It is
also easy to see how such a movement could get into power when the
present ruling class will have sufficiently undermined its own
legitimacy.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This
would be a massive disaster, on many levels. What we need is a
pragmatic policy aimed at cushioning the descent and at making it as
bearable as possible for the common people, without any delusion
about what we can do and hope for. This may, and probably will, imply
the removal of the present kleptocracy, but this is quite
incompatible with the kind of ideological fantasies which generally
emerge from apocalyptic feelings.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
first step in avoiding them is to recognize that our actions have
only a limited influence upon the fate of the Earth and our delusions
of power are just that, delusions. Then we might begin to lead
meaningful lives, within the strict bounds set upon us by the laws of
Nature.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">As
for the Earth, well, as Sara Teasdale said : </span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">There
will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
swallows circling with their shimmering sound;</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
frogs in the pool singing at night,</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
wild plum trees in tremulous white;</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Robins
will wear their feathery fire,</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Whistling
their whims on a low fence-wire;</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
not one will know of the war, not one</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Will
care at last when it is done.</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Not
one would mind, neither bird nor tree,</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">If
mankind perished utterly;</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
Spring herself when she woke at dawn</span></span></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Would
scarcely know that we were gone.</span></span></i></div>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-1618854878041326082012-07-28T06:41:00.002-07:002012-07-28T06:52:55.229-07:00The end of the European dream<style type="text/css">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXBcQNy5aLnKmyumbWHg6qV8is4AVCW8zwSoQFDW1l8oXv-1-ujj4hWS5y4RfSA7dzJ_p-FtiBmpM5UtXGjxl853tMy1_d8seIH8wcmQbkfPZkkQ-bSEUSiUIhSVG_hy6mn7NG4R-u-EQ/s1600/Valdemar_Atterdag_brandskattar_Visby_(1882).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXBcQNy5aLnKmyumbWHg6qV8is4AVCW8zwSoQFDW1l8oXv-1-ujj4hWS5y4RfSA7dzJ_p-FtiBmpM5UtXGjxl853tMy1_d8seIH8wcmQbkfPZkkQ-bSEUSiUIhSVG_hy6mn7NG4R-u-EQ/s320/Valdemar_Atterdag_brandskattar_Visby_(1882).jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
European debt crisis is making the front page, again. Moody has
changed the outlook of Germany to negative and Spain is forced to
borrow at more and more unsustainable rates. The fate of the Euro is
more and more uncertain and while it is not certain, it is quite
possible that Greece, and perhaps other Mediterranean countries, will
abandon it at some point of the future. This, of course, would
trigger a trust crisis which would in turn further damage the
position of a currency which has no need for that. The value of the
euro would fall and the chance of some state going bankrupt would
greatly increase.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, and contrary to what many doomsayers would like to believe,
states can and do survive bankruptcies. Those familiar with the
history of Denmark will remember, for instance, that Christopher II
of Denmark pawned nearly his entire kingdom to German magnates
between 1320 and 1332. Yet Denmark still exists and is still a
kingdom. You see, states have an enormous advantage over corporations
: they generally command the loyalty of their subjects and can
therefore tax and draft them.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">That is
what Christopher’s successor, Valdemar IV, did. He used his wife’s
dowry to get back some mortgaged lands he overtaxed to repay the rest
of his debts. When that didn’t suffice...well, a royal army in full
array could be very convincing.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIn_DavHxoHubxtowewQ0ih9t94BiaXezQsQL1A1FsZEeB1GCiG4BRKfNLLQDr2y6LC6MfNgsVBSMcb0zEuAL_kPnULfrnBGMl8wA4Pjznc7TCpKCcW_j73BsxDr4Q6JKEWeU_U5Wz-MI/s1600/A21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIn_DavHxoHubxtowewQ0ih9t94BiaXezQsQL1A1FsZEeB1GCiG4BRKfNLLQDr2y6LC6MfNgsVBSMcb0zEuAL_kPnULfrnBGMl8wA4Pjznc7TCpKCcW_j73BsxDr4Q6JKEWeU_U5Wz-MI/s320/A21.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Closer
to us, when the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, they decided to
repudiate the Tsar’s debts, which caused a lot of complaining back
in France (and still does, to some extend), but hardly more. States
have defaulted on their debts or printed banknotes to inflate their
way out of them. This is not without consequences, some of them
drastic, but it certainly beats letting bad debts accumulate and
smother your economy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Those
are, however, political decisions and that’s exactly the kind of
decision the European Union has been designed to avoid.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Western
European Civilization, of which the European Union is the last
incarnation (possibly as in Llywelyn the Last), formed during the
dissolution of the Western Roman Empire from the fusion of Germanic
and Roman culture under the Catholic Church. Unlike Chinese
civilization, in which the unity of “everything under heaven” is
an imperative and India, which hardly cared about political unity
until it was forced upon it by the British Empire, Western Europe has
always considered unification as a worthy goal, but consistently
failed to achieve it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
attempts at restoring the Western Roman Empire met with limited
success. Justinian reconquered northern Africa and Italy, but failed
in Spain. Charlemagne was crowned Roman Emperor and recognized as
such by Byzantium, but held neither Britain nor Spain. Charlemagne’s
empire fell to civil war in 843 and its successor states were
promptly besieged by Vikings, Hungarians and Bretons. Its existence,
short as it was, enabled, however, the imperial idea to survive in
both the Papacy, which came to consider itself as the supreme
authority in Western Europe, and the Holy Roman Empire, which claimed
the legacy of Charlemagne.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As often
happens, the Papacy and the Empire undermined each other’s
legitimacy during the Investiture Controversy, a long struggle
between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (and their
respective tame intellectuals) over who would appoint bishops.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">While
the Pope came out the victor with the Concordat of Worms in 1122, the
Investiture Controversy paved the way for the affirmation of the
kings (notably those of France and England) against both the Emperor
and the Pope. As soon as in the XIIIth century, the French king
declared himself “Emperor in his own kingdom”. At the very
beginning of the XIVth century, after the convenient but officially
natural death of Boniface VIII while he was negotiating with the king
of France’s special envoy Guillaume de Nogaret, the pope recognized
the authority of Philip IV over the Church of France in temporal
matters.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgySfhjTkRXX4PESLIAaDEByw1J-jP3rpnhhRbbWr75P7BLOkb36B3O0AkyU85Y5Tw6LndooZrBu-_wEjVbiGSkXAGxoGMg_KsNpOSQ35muUVJyQIuDHuJMzEtMQLYM-_jVEgauPHu1rWw/s1600/640px-Jacques-Louis_David,_The_Coronation_of_Napoleon_edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgySfhjTkRXX4PESLIAaDEByw1J-jP3rpnhhRbbWr75P7BLOkb36B3O0AkyU85Y5Tw6LndooZrBu-_wEjVbiGSkXAGxoGMg_KsNpOSQ35muUVJyQIuDHuJMzEtMQLYM-_jVEgauPHu1rWw/s320/640px-Jacques-Louis_David,_The_Coronation_of_Napoleon_edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">When the
Reformation fractured until then spiritually united Europe, the
sovereignty of the kingdoms was too well established to be contested.
This does not mean, however, that the idea of an European Empire had
been abandoned. The Hapsburg of Spain and Austria during the XVI<sup>th</sup>
century, Louis XIV of France during the Spanish Succession War and
finally Napoléon Bonaparte tried to recreate it, under one form or
another, and failed. The order the victors imposed at the Congress
of Vienna in 1815 explicitly repudiated the imperial idea and was
based upon a balance of power between the big European dynastic
states and a guarantee of independence for the smaller players.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As the
imperial idea seemed to recede in the background, a new conception of
European unification appeared, which would lay the groundwork for the
modern European (anti-)Union.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">In 1795,
the German philosopher Immanuel Kant authored a small book titled
"Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch", in which he
argued that war could be made to disappear through a new
international order based upon the generalization of republican
governments and the institution of the rule of law at the
international level.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Obviously
Kant’s ideas were not immediately implemented, but they laid the
foundations for what one might call an <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">"</span>international
liberalism<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">"</span>, based upon
the refusal of international war, as its “mainstream” counterpart
was based on the refusal of the ideological civil war. In both cases,
the idea is that the only way to keep people (and countries) from
killing each other is to appeal to their egoistical interest, by
using the twin tools of the free market and the abstract law. One
finds this idea, for instance, in Norman Angell’s (in)famous
pamphlet <i>The Great Illusion</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
which argued in 1909 that war was now futile due to the formation of
a global market.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo47hqxJlEoteBLOL8EuaDZxBoJHVMw9o2fxr-ro2NhtAjocFYZJBHlRPB9sxzuNcCxoED64Iw1sXZNIuxcgSyaOcQM_QPd1SRH3bZ9CKKFKxMlAxqQUWEuLjVHDLA8py2oD-Q7rL47XY/s1600/349px-Immanuel_Kant_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo47hqxJlEoteBLOL8EuaDZxBoJHVMw9o2fxr-ro2NhtAjocFYZJBHlRPB9sxzuNcCxoED64Iw1sXZNIuxcgSyaOcQM_QPd1SRH3bZ9CKKFKxMlAxqQUWEuLjVHDLA8py2oD-Q7rL47XY/s320/349px-Immanuel_Kant_3.jpg" width="232" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
European Union, as it was created after the horrors of Nazism and the
colonial wars, is, to date, the most achieved implementation of this
principle. The predecessor of the European Union, the European Coal
and Steel Community, was formed in 1950 to prevent another round of
European wars (in itself a worth goal), through the creation of a
common market for coal and steel.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">To quote
the then French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman : </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.74cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>The
solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any
war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but
materially impossible. The setting up of this powerful productive
unit, open to all countries willing to take part and bound ultimately
to provide all the member countries with the basic elements of
industrial production on the same terms, will lay a true foundation
for their economic unification.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.74cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.74cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>[…]
In this way, there will be realized simply and speedily that fusion
of interest which is indispensable to the establishment of a common
economic system; it may be the leaven from which may grow a wider and
deeper community between countries long opposed to one another by
sanguinary divisions.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.74cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.74cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>By
pooling basic production and by instituting a new High Authority,
whose decisions will bind France, Germany and other member countries,
this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete
foundation of a European federation indispensable to the preservation
of peace.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.74cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.74cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>[…]
In contrast to international cartels, which tend to impose
restrictive practices on distribution and the exploitation of
national markets, and to maintain high profits, the organization will
ensure the fusion of markets and the expansion of production.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0.74cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
two initiatives which could have oriented the future European Union
in a more political direction (the European Defence Community and the
European Political Community) failed during the mid fifties and all
subsequent treaties, even though they entailed significant
sovereignty loss for the member states, followed the logic exposed by
Robert Schuman’s declaration, that is the construction of a common
market, managed by an administration according to an agreed upon body
of regulations.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, an administration is emphatically not a political body. It
does not set policies. It applies treaties as interpreted by the
court of justice. It is a headless body, but a very powerful headless
body which makes very difficult for member states to promote anything
but the creation of a common market where the possibility of a
meaningful political decision has been reduced to almost nothing.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
poster child for this is, of course, the European Central Bank. It is
independent and receives no order from either member states or the
other European institutions. At the same time, however, being an
administrative body, it cannot change policy. By statute, it must
keep price stability, whatever the situation and at any cost.
Inflating the euro, and taking political responsibility for it, is
simply beyond its capacities.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD8OemYzpXxJPH2eoIeeK0kEFrjU6Nvz-lgIKi2kifGEl6zGA_KydU6kbg13xMfztdlC_k1HIVrGTw08gCKD8l9EplvEx4sl996Q9pMGGpOCJ1P0Wh21cdc1g5tPiIDn6pKuOgzOXnlv8/s1600/480px-Zahlungsmittel.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD8OemYzpXxJPH2eoIeeK0kEFrjU6Nvz-lgIKi2kifGEl6zGA_KydU6kbg13xMfztdlC_k1HIVrGTw08gCKD8l9EplvEx4sl996Q9pMGGpOCJ1P0Wh21cdc1g5tPiIDn6pKuOgzOXnlv8/s320/480px-Zahlungsmittel.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, further “federalization” won’t solve the problem, as
this would mean, in the present context, giving the European
administration more power to curtail the political actions of member
states, without giving it the power, or the the legitimacy, to set
policies of its own. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Fans
of Isaac Asimov will remember the Second Foundation's undead empire,
created by calculation and ruled by calculation.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
problem, aside from the fact that an unelected, unanswerable elite is
always bad news, is that such a system can work only in periods of
sustained growth. You see, if the cohesion of your society is only
based upon a promise of ever increasing prosperity... well, let’s
say you’d better deliver.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">With
peak energy, economic growth is becoming more and more difficult to
achieve. There may be still some efficiency gains to be made, but on
the whole, the only way to create real wealth (not the administrative
spending included as wealth in GDP measuring) is by taking it from a
neighbor. That is what happens at the global level with the rise of
China and the use of the financial economy by the USA to extract
wealth from their periphery. That is what happen at the European
level with the Euro acting now as a wealth pump, funneling the
resources of the south toward France and Germany.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">That
means that the European debts are essentially unpayable. Without real
growth they are bound to become even more so with every passing year,
concentrating resources ever more in the hands of an ever smaller
number of people. And of course, this will even worsen when oil
production ceases to stagnate and begins to decline.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">At
some point somebody will have to emulate Valdemar IV, default on his
debt or leave the Euro to inflate his way out of it. Bankers and
traders won’t be amused but will quickly learn that money doesn’t
command loyalty. Those who won’t be able to run will then have an
interesting discussion with a court... or a lynch mob.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
problem is that the European administration cannot take this
decision. It is not a political body, it cannot change its policies,
and those are liberal in nature. The first rule of a free market is
that debts must be paid, no mater the costs and the consequences, and
it is a rule it cannot break.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Nations
states will have to do it, therefore, either together in some grand
conference, or more probably alone, after the crisis has put some
radical into power. When this will happen, the European Union will
simply vanish as the USSR did after the August Coup and the Belavezha
Accords. Those who still nurture the dream of a political Europe,
whether it be the Europe of Regions of my own political family or the
Europe as civilization of the <i>volkish</i> far right will have to
accept, as I did, that Europe has become an hollow shell and that
time has run out. It is around nation states, not necessarily the
ones we know by the way, that Europe will have to face the long
descent, until they too dissolve.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As
for the dream of an unified Europe, it will have to wait for new
empires to come out of the forests of the coming Dark Age, but, of
course, by that time, it will no longer be the Europe we know.</span></div>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-20493405984487559052012-07-19T06:16:00.000-07:002012-07-19T06:16:28.334-07:00(There ain’t no) green jobs<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjKJmLrgtTZh1SsKKT9ErJ7dHLTMLRP4asXc7JVHKI1xLguM6iMx78QGEAwts-u1l4Y7fpj8B9tgKahyean5AdgfTQUoYVVZV4deFnOtks25hzovfILRaSOHdpIajZ6elcVFBR0wjruoQ/s1600/emplois-verts-prometteurs-sur-papier-hypothet-L-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjKJmLrgtTZh1SsKKT9ErJ7dHLTMLRP4asXc7JVHKI1xLguM6iMx78QGEAwts-u1l4Y7fpj8B9tgKahyean5AdgfTQUoYVVZV4deFnOtks25hzovfILRaSOHdpIajZ6elcVFBR0wjruoQ/s1600/emplois-verts-prometteurs-sur-papier-hypothet-L-2.jpeg" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Jobs, or
rather the lack of, have been a major issue during the last French
elections. This is hardly surprising as mass unemployment has been a
fact of life in France for a whole generation. Unemployment rates
have begun to climb during the late seventies and have hoovered
between eight and ten percent since then. Of course the real figure
is probably higher. Like its American and British counterparts, the
French government will do anything in its power to lower the
unemployment statistics, including sending people into pointless
vocational courses so as to get them off the official unemployment
rolls.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It is no
wonder, therefore, that most political discussions in France revolve
around jobs, how to create them, how to keep them and what to do with
those who can’t get any. The value of a policy is measured by the
number of jobs it creates or destroys. It is why, for instance, the
main French union (the CGT) supports nuclear energy : it provides a
lot of (unsafe) jobs.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, should only one reactor undergo a catastrophic meltdown, a
significant part of the country would be definitely out of job. The
very concept of catastrophic meltdown being unfrench, however, this
is nothing to worry about.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It is no
wonder either that everybody’s political programs focus on how to
create jobs. The communists want to create jobs by making everyone a
civil servant of sort. The socialists want to create jobs by
subsidizing them, but they presently can’t because they don’t
have the money. The moderate right wants to give more money to those
who already have a lot of it in the hope that it will somehow trickle
down, not that it matters very much if it doesn’t. The National
Front wants to hunker down behind barbed wires, which should somehow
create jobs, Muslim people need not apply.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As for
the Greens, they want to create green jobs, a lot of them, preferably
through generous state subsidies. Make no mistake, those green jobs
does not involve growing green things. The group the Greens
represent, namely the enlightened upper middle class, wants
reasonably well paid and prestigious jobs, and herding sheep in
central Brittany definitely doesn’t qualify.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Jobs are
remarkably close to niches in a non-human ecosystem, which is hardly
surprising since human societies basically work like simplified
ecosystems in which the dominant species, as well as some of its
parasites / symbionts / commensals, can assume a high number of
roles.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">And as
you know, the maximum number of niches a given ecosystem can support
depends upon the energy inflow it gets from its environment.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsskpJUvvvsf08zzpuX9Xr_3z2fTCyw6Xyv7ZREYjbXl8GujDeSKEW56H9ZtOYvsQ6gpyQQAEWbgZx6so8pMbtORSXmxegYOHLxLmqSNb4CcaTVndQ1H9r2EY4nOIWiYBzJV5oE_QttbA/s1600/Quesnay_Tableau.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsskpJUvvvsf08zzpuX9Xr_3z2fTCyw6Xyv7ZREYjbXl8GujDeSKEW56H9ZtOYvsQ6gpyQQAEWbgZx6so8pMbtORSXmxegYOHLxLmqSNb4CcaTVndQ1H9r2EY4nOIWiYBzJV5oE_QttbA/s320/Quesnay_Tableau.jpg" width="190" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">To
understand how this relates to human societies, it is necessary to go
back to pre-revolutionary France and to one of the first economic
schools, the Physiocrats. The Physiocrats, the best known of whom
were François Quesnay and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, believed that
agriculture was the only source of wealth, and that this wealth,
produced in the fields, was then distributed among the three classes
of the society, namely the peasants, the land-owners and what they
called the “sterile class”, which included craftsmen and traders.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, such an analysis was extremely subversive in a country where
the nobility was forbidden to work. The Physiocrats favored
enlightened despotism and their main model was Qing China, with its
class of scholar-bureaucrats, who were also agrarian landlords, and
its absolute monarch who could impose his will on his Empire without
burdening himself with such technicalities as the rule of law.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Needless
to say, they were opposed at every corner by both the nobility, which
wanted to retain its old privileges, and by the bourgeoisie, which
was not interested in becoming a “sterile class” under the thumb
of a Chinese style bureaucracy. Despite a few successes, such as the
ministry of Turgot, from 1774 to 1776, they failed to impose their
views and quickly become irrelevant when their enemies forced the
king to convoke the Estates General in 1789.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">They
were right, however, in viewing the production of goods and services
as mere consumption of the agricultural surplus, provided we consider
the agricultural surplus as a proxy for energy surplus, which it was
in 1774 France. Even though they also used wind and hydraulic power,
pre-industrial societies were totally dependent upon solar energy.
They captured it by growing plants, which transformed it into various
nutriments human and animal muscles used to produce (not necessarily
useful) work.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbvw4ALh4Mzr5nXvgqv8KLue68Orbyp9d9ARKELMW1-vu8DrVsNFp7OmYJzkMHwyDwL_4OoVSuYwFpuXWoAovt3yoejNV1j9KIZlpEoY0krSPfA9POimlSm67pphLwPaxqoSzEa9dNcbc/s1600/640px-Coal_Miner_1969.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbvw4ALh4Mzr5nXvgqv8KLue68Orbyp9d9ARKELMW1-vu8DrVsNFp7OmYJzkMHwyDwL_4OoVSuYwFpuXWoAovt3yoejNV1j9KIZlpEoY0krSPfA9POimlSm67pphLwPaxqoSzEa9dNcbc/s320/640px-Coal_Miner_1969.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Starting
with the early XIX<sup>th</sup> century, we have replaced
chlorophyl-mediated solar energy by fossil fuels, first coal, then
oil and gas. This has enabled us to create huge surplus of energy and
to buy ourselves a lifestyle which would have made His Majesty Louis
XVI white with envy. This has not changed the nature of our economy,
however, the production of goods and services is still a consumption.
The only difference is that the surplus is no longer provided by
peasants. Those no longer produce energy, they transform fossil fuels
into food and are therefore no different from your average industry
worker.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Those
that produce the energy surplus the rest of us is using, are, mostly,
coal miners and workers of the oil and gas industry. The sterile
class comprises all those who provide good and services, as for the
land owner class... well, there is no shortage of kleptocrats. Of
course, the boundary between the kleptocrats and the providers of
goods and services is somewhat blurred. If your average Wall Street
trader or big shareholder is doubtlessly a kleptocrat any responsible
government should fiscally bludgeon to death, it is an open question
whether the fashion designers or fake artists who cater to their
needs are lesser kleptocrats or providers of much needed services.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">What is
sure is that jobs are a cost for a society, a necessary cost, but a
cost nevertheless. As our ability to extract resources and energy
from our environment declines, so will our ability to fund high
diversified highly specialized jobs – exactly the kind of jobs the
Greens want to create.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, you can expect anybody with a minimum of political clout to
fight to make sure it will be some other guy’s job that will be
sacrificed. The kleptocrats are already doing that, but they are
hardly alone. All organized groups are using unions and political
parties to preserve their interests.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikJD9tjJlPHZ2EKrOJxQoj0yp0yPaG31kKdyQkyjN2XdybhwD22MCW4-b4zUTcalEoInjN99VjRQJ4sZuFVXDlst97mOx_FkthIVno7bTdBnIUBUooOy1-H_PiJYMSgC4BX_Vaj3ryXkU/s1600/R%C3%A9ception_du_Grand_Cond%C3%A9_%C3%A0_Versailles_(Jean-L%C3%A9on_G%C3%A9r%C3%B4me,_1878%29.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikJD9tjJlPHZ2EKrOJxQoj0yp0yPaG31kKdyQkyjN2XdybhwD22MCW4-b4zUTcalEoInjN99VjRQJ4sZuFVXDlst97mOx_FkthIVno7bTdBnIUBUooOy1-H_PiJYMSgC4BX_Vaj3ryXkU/s320/R%C3%A9ception_du_Grand_Cond%C3%A9_%C3%A0_Versailles_(Jean-L%C3%A9on_G%C3%A9r%C3%B4me,_1878%29.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">That is
what the clamoring and pleading for green jobs amounts to : an
attempt by parts of the industrial establishment and of the upper
middle class to secure their position within the society through
overt or covert public subsidies, and an attempt by the same groups
to legitimize their resource grabbing operation by promising a lot of
people (and nature) will benefit from it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Needless
to say, subsidizing solar panels in Brittany (to take an example I
know well), whether it be through tax cuts or by buying the
electricity thus produced at a guaranteed, and rather high, price, is
pure unadulterated greenwashing. In fact, any energy source which
relies on state subsidies to remain viable is likely to be an energy
sink as well as a scheme by some industry guys to divert public money
their way.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This
does not mean there are no sustainable jobs to be created, but they
are unlikely to be green or to be supported by the green
establishment. They won’t cater to the needs of the wealthy and
probably won’t give much prestige to those who will do them. They
belong to the realm of appliance reparation, second hand trade, home
(cheap) refurbishing, local manufacturing and of course domestic
production, far, very far away from the costly glittering of the
solar panels and of the Parisian salons.</span></div>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-81516099837295721812012-07-04T21:37:00.001-07:002012-07-05T07:55:09.902-07:00Campagning with the Greens : the basic income delusion<style type="text/css">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigxiOh3FhfUDXJCF_NL6Zr4-AeHOFeDXex8s8F-T6Tz7t_b3iItkE9-Fp5UD8HCaw8tPSYfXg9gLMWEv76ucaisE5xw0OT3xrEjXwVoY70lW5T4W6eX5hbw6BNUWwH84BSxOzZg1BdZH8/s1600/Jean-Leon_Gerome_Pollice_Verso.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigxiOh3FhfUDXJCF_NL6Zr4-AeHOFeDXex8s8F-T6Tz7t_b3iItkE9-Fp5UD8HCaw8tPSYfXg9gLMWEv76ucaisE5xw0OT3xrEjXwVoY70lW5T4W6eX5hbw6BNUWwH84BSxOzZg1BdZH8/s320/Jean-Leon_Gerome_Pollice_Verso.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As
you may know, there have been <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_legislative_election,_2012">legislative
elections</a> in France. In my constituency, I supported the Greens
because... well, because there was a national agreement which could
(and actually did) get us a MP and officially endorsing this <a href="http://pascalehameau.eelv-legislatives.fr/">girl</a>
was a part of the deal. As for my opinion about the whole thing...
well, let's just say that sometimes you just have to do your job.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
main positive point, was that I could observe the inner working of
the local Green group (at least the faction which had won the rather
brutal fight for the nomination) and was forced to attend a few
rallies I would not have bothered to go to otherwise. During one of
them – a so called <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">"</span>political
coffee session<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">"</span>, somebody
raised the infamous basic income question.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">For
those who are not into radicals politics, basic income is an income
granted unconditionally to all citizens (or inhabitants) of a given
polity. France has already something of the kind. It is called the
RSA (for <i>Revenu de Solidarité Active</i>). Any French resident
above 25 without any regular income is entitled to a monthly grant of
474,93 €.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As
incomes go, it is a very basic one. The median salary in France is
around 1600 € and I rent my three rooms flat for 517 €.
Saint-Nazaire is by the way a working class city and housing tend to
be cheap down here. I probably couldn't find an equivalent apartment
in Paris for thrice this price. Even though it can be supplemented by
other aids, RSA is not something you can feast on. You can survive
with it, but hardly more. It also has a negative income tax</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, it was not about this kind of basic income our green activist
talked. What she meant was an income close or equal to the French
minimum wage – around 1100 € a month. It is a popular idea among
degrowth people and some sections of the Green movement and of the
far left. My last girlfriend was very much into it, and it definitely
is a bad idea – the girlfriend in question was a bad idea too, by
the way, but it is a bit beside the point.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
main reason for it should be obvious to anybody vaguely aware of the
coming energy descent. Even its proponents acknowledge that the
feasibility of a basic income system is highly dependent upon the
continued existence of the industrial civilization.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As
the French philosopher André Gorz wrote in 1989 : </span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">...The connection between more and
better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are
already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet-unsatisfied
needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing
differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is
especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence,
beauty, time and human contact...</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">From the point where it takes only
1,000 hours per year or 20,000 to 30,000 hours per lifetime to create
an amount of wealth equal to or greater than the amount we create at
the present time in 1,600 hours per year or 40,000 to 50,000 hours in
a working life, we must all be able to obtain a real income equal to
or higher than our current salaries in exchange for a greatly reduced
quantity of work...</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Neither is it true any longer that the
more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The
present crisis has stimulated technological change of an
unprecedented scale and speed: 'the micro-chip revolution'. The
object and indeed the effect of this revolution has been to make
rapidly increasing savings in labor, in the industrial,
administrative and service sectors. Increasing production is secured
in these sectors by decreasing amounts of labor. As a result, the
social process of production no longer needs everyone to work in it
on a full-time basis. The work ethic ceases to be viable in such a
situation and work-based society is thrown into crisis...</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
—<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">André Gorz, Critique of economic
Reason, Gallile, 1989</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
idea according to which the rule of the machine will break the
historical connection between work and income is as old as the
Industrial Revolution. It is implicit in early marxist thought. Thus
in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Karl Marx himself wrote :</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">In
a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving
subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and
therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has
vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's
prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the
all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of
co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the
narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and
society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability,
to each according to his needs!</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Which
means that under Communism, people would have a perpetual free lunch,
what basic income fundamentally amounts to. We know, of course how it
turned out and actual Marxist regimes and parties quickly developed a
strong work ethic, sometimes to the point of ridicule – does
somebody remember Stakhanov ?</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course this did not mean that the idea of a generalized free lunch
died. It merely migrated to the techno-optimists, who replaced the
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">"</span>higher stage of
Communism<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">" by technological
progress, which would cause workers to be progressively replaced by
robots and automated factories. This would greatly increase the
richness of the society, but also have a devastating impact upon blue
collar retail and wholesale employees and drastically shrink the
middle class, making a generous basic income both feasible and
socially and politically necessary. The only other option would be
the development of a permanent underclass of former workers and
employees, with all the politically unpleasant consequences this may
entail.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigxiOh3FhfUDXJCF_NL6Zr4-AeHOFeDXex8s8F-T6Tz7t_b3iItkE9-Fp5UD8HCaw8tPSYfXg9gLMWEv76ucaisE5xw0OT3xrEjXwVoY70lW5T4W6eX5hbw6BNUWwH84BSxOzZg1BdZH8/s1600/Jean-Leon_Gerome_Pollice_Verso.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0aoAIGQttlVZNAntW-PoHQLtKkQq865z3v7UpepK10wlMAijpMxYh9EW9SyfvR2HM8iAcyb2BLX0Z2LICMeGnajNrZi0qQ6NSBvY775gfVSJrFs53b19plkFXfFFp7pZhwdcXg1-SY-M/s1600/The-end-of-work-bookcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0aoAIGQttlVZNAntW-PoHQLtKkQq865z3v7UpepK10wlMAijpMxYh9EW9SyfvR2HM8iAcyb2BLX0Z2LICMeGnajNrZi0qQ6NSBvY775gfVSJrFs53b19plkFXfFFp7pZhwdcXg1-SY-M/s320/The-end-of-work-bookcover.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This
is, for instance, the thesis of Jeremy Rifkin in this monument of the
techno-green thought, that is The End of Work, but the theme is
pervasive in science-fiction, for instance in Kurt Vonnegut's first
novel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano">Player
Piano</a>, which, incidentally showed that a basic income guarantee
was perfectly compatible with alienation and oppression.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
problem, of course, is that this future of robots automated factories
shall never come to pass. It is not automation </span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>per
se</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> that fueled the
industrial revolution and gave our society, but access to fossil
energy. Without coal, oil or gas to fuel them and the highly complex
social apparatus they need for their manufacture and maintenance, our
machines are useless.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Moreover,
the ability of our economy to create surplus, which can be used,
among other things, to fund a basic income system, is steadily
decreasing. As we replace easy oil and coal by less than adequate
substitutes such as lignite or tar sand or, gods forbid, ethanol, and
are forced to devote more and more resources to energy extraction,
the net surplus, on which our civilization lives, shrinks. Add to
this the need of maintaining a gargantuan infrastructure, both
material and immaterial, with a stagnating or declining resource
base, and it is easy to understand that even if our nominal GDP still
grows, it becomes more and more difficult to mobilize it to get
something actually done.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">That
is exactly what is happening today in still rich Europe, and it is
obvious that even though our GDP is theoretically large enough for us
to grant all our citizens a basic income, so much of it is tied up by
debt and infrastructure maintenance that even keeping our welfare
system in its present state is probably impossible.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">There
is, however, another, better and deeper reason to reject basic income
: it has been tried.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqe_t3OYdAWKBL58dRw0k1aIGH4y-XAPlYqvFM0aqwque8FIP4FYVJkB1ZbvivRhPhyphenhyphenKTM5jabGrpBG9SHq-IzR1HulZevH30XTQxwvUrQmh1sB5EQ-x9mos8GLAst3qeRRyaUYX6Nj1U/s1600/Tiberius_Gracchus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqe_t3OYdAWKBL58dRw0k1aIGH4y-XAPlYqvFM0aqwque8FIP4FYVJkB1ZbvivRhPhyphenhyphenKTM5jabGrpBG9SHq-IzR1HulZevH30XTQxwvUrQmh1sB5EQ-x9mos8GLAst3qeRRyaUYX6Nj1U/s320/Tiberius_Gracchus.jpg" width="318" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It
was the bread part of the infamous "bread and circus".
Originally a nation of small farmers, the late Roman Republic
developed a serious case of latifundism as debt-crushed peasants sold
their land to great proprietors and fled to Rome, searching a job
most of them did not find. In 123 BC, Tiberius Gracchus had the
Senate vote a grain law under which a portion of the grain collected
as revenue for the state was sold at a subsidized rate to citizens.
Tiberius Gracchus also pushed for a rather drastic land reform, which
caused him to have a lethal encounter with a chair during a very
manly senatorial debate.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
habit of distributing free or very cheap grain to the Roman pleb
caught on, however, and in 58 BC the <i>popularis</i> politician
Clodius Pulcher set up a regular dole of free grain after having been
elected as a tribune – at that time politicians did make good on
their promises. Cesar and Augustus appear to have been embarrassed
with the whole thing but did not dare to abolish it altogether.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Later
emperors continued the practice and even supplemented the dole with
olive oil, wine or pork. The rationale was that as long as the mob
was kept well fed and entertained, it would leave politics to the
emperor and his court. It did not work very well with the army and
the praetorian guard, but it was very effective with the Roman crowd.
As the poet Juvenal stated in his Satires : </span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>Already
long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have
abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out
military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now
restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and
circuses</i></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, at the end, bearded foreigners with a strange accent and a
funny religion took over the breadbasket of the Empire and their
leader, a gentleman by the name of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiseric">Geiseric</a>
decided that grain ought to stay with those who produced it.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Rome
could implement the free grain dole only because it ruthlessly looted
its own provinces, destroying its own resource base and paving the
way for its own demise. We would have to divert already scarce
resources from the maintenance of our own civilization, speeding up
its disintegration. The principles behind the basic income and the
Roman grain dole are the same, however : entitlement, dependency and
alienation.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
proponents of basic income claim that we deserve it because our
societies are so rich. The problem is that this richness does not
come from nowhere. A part of it is the product of a a failing but
still vigorous imperial system which transfers wealth and resources
from the south to the north under threat of military force. Another
part come from the frenetic overexploitation of non-renewable natural
resources, which basically means we have stolen it from our
descendants. For what is probably the most favored class in the whole
human history, past and future, to claim it deserves to divert still
more resources so as to be able to live well without contributing
anything is pure unadulterated entitlement.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It
is no accident that most supporters of the basic income come, in
France at least, from the higher middle-class (the bobos) or from
their poorer siblings : the RSA revolutionists. The RSA
revolutionists are radicals who claim to despise "the system"
and to seek to overthrow it, while being totally dependent on its
continued existence for their very survival. They are especially
common in the autonomist branch of marxism, which advocates
struggling against "capitalism" outside organized
structures through direct action, which in practice amounts to piling
up symbolic acts while living in the margins of the society from
state subsidies.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Basic
income is, in fact, the logical consequence of the idea according to
which the Universe must give us everything we want, provided we
clamor loudly enough for it.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, that does not mean we must abolish welfare before it becomes
unsustainable. Welfare has nothing to do with basic income, because
its goal is to help people in need, as long as they are in need but
not an hour longer. It is basic human solidarity and it is telling
that the same monotheist religions who say "Whoever doesn't want
to work shouldn't be allowed to eat" make the giving of alms
nearly mandatory. Islam even makes zaqât (obligatory alms) one of
its pillars, along daily prayers, fasting and pilgrimage.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Those
are two distinct concepts.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">According
to its proponents, it will liberate us, and enable us to devote our
time to art, culture, or what Jeremy Rifkin calls the Third Sector -
voluntary and community-based service organizations. This, however,
is a bobo’s utopia. In real communities, nothing is really free. If
help is freely given, it is under the assumption that it will be
freely returned at some later moment. If cooperation is so
widespread, it is because it is necessary to the well-being, and
sometimes to the very survival, of each individual.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdVYclzqNu0bKxDKJaOvBz_u9YT5jY3X2EPpcbOiOWXOaf98y46XfFtx2hn57vJwL0il2V_VrrxTJtK07JrtiD_91q7bz_TmJxjBg4Nyg0m5c-cp_jTNR1MLkjOMm_-AbBF6PRPuoNngA/s1600/les-temps-moderne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdVYclzqNu0bKxDKJaOvBz_u9YT5jY3X2EPpcbOiOWXOaf98y46XfFtx2hn57vJwL0il2V_VrrxTJtK07JrtiD_91q7bz_TmJxjBg4Nyg0m5c-cp_jTNR1MLkjOMm_-AbBF6PRPuoNngA/s320/les-temps-moderne.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">By
distributing resources freely, the state, or whatever will have taken
its place, replaces in fact an horizontal relationship between
members of a same community by a vertical relationship between an
individual and the political power that feeds him – and might stop
doing so at any moment. The likely result will not be community
building, but social fragmentation and increased control from above.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This
won’t even increase the control any individual has on his own life,
quite the contrary. From this point of view, basic income is the
continuation, some will say the fulfillment, of the process which,
starting from the Industrial Revolution, turned craftsmen and
craftswomen into unskilled workers and supermarket cashiers. While
the craftsman could be poor, he was still the master of his craft and
of his own life, dependent upon no one but himself. The dispossessed
factory worker, who replaced him, accomplishing meaningless,
repetitive tasks, was but a cog in the machine, totally disconnected
from the product of his work. The workers of a specific factory,
taken as group, could however, take a collective pride in the fruit
of their labors. The average recipient of a basic income would be
nothing but a passive individual, without any professional or social
identity, and while a minority could find themselves in voluntary
activities, the majority will become like characters of The Machine
Stops of Player Piano, idle and thoroughly alienated, deprived of the
possibility of controlling their own life and, most important, of
doing something.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">In
Player Piano, the main character, a member of the elite, thinks of
retreating to a farm without water or electricity then take part in a
doomed revolt against the technocratic order to give back to men the
freedom to do something with their life and of making things worth
taking pride in.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">I
think I would have followed him, if I did not know that this absurd
basic income idea was fated to die with the industrial civilization.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-30388130516610457682012-06-17T07:30:00.000-07:002012-06-17T07:30:17.534-07:00The Eliott Effect<style type="text/css">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3INCj4EEpBHV3RWjY_iq0KYvYo2cSue9H_4uRXQgL8SoKRdHpM2gJk0JGFcA1CL8j4zrgP_Jt4evtIjmLnpcwEfdI81g5-P2jjhzLLNoXBMkvywskSTC7fNCRU8v0qb6bOf1pprnDPcA/s1600/13052012035.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3INCj4EEpBHV3RWjY_iq0KYvYo2cSue9H_4uRXQgL8SoKRdHpM2gJk0JGFcA1CL8j4zrgP_Jt4evtIjmLnpcwEfdI81g5-P2jjhzLLNoXBMkvywskSTC7fNCRU8v0qb6bOf1pprnDPcA/s320/13052012035.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">One
of the major problem I have in discussing the nature of the ongoing
crisis and the fate of the industrial society is dispelling the myth
of the <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">"</span>immaterial
economy<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">". It is, I must say,
particularly widespread among French elites, perhaps because, as a
nation, we tend to despise manual work. Not so long ago we had a
debate in the Municipal Council about the digital economy in Nantes
and only my boss raised the tantalium supply issue (as I said, he is
</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>my</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">
boss), as for our resident Greens, they push for the replacement of
paper by computers and tablets.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
idea is that since work done and transmitted by a computer is not
tangible, it is entirely the product of the human brain and therefore
free. Digital economy could therefore fuel a limitless growth even in
an era of widespread energy and raw material shortages.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Nothing
could be further removed from the truth, as I was taught in a rather
dramatic way.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">I
happen to be owned by a four-legged black-furred monster called
Eliott who enjoys stealing chicken escalopes and leaping on tables at
the most inconvenient moment. So that day, I was reading my mails
while enjoying an excellent Iranian tea, when the little monster
decided it was the right time to run across the table, toppling the
mug in the process. The tea poured down on my laptop, which proved to
have little taste for even light flavored Iranian blends. It fizzled
then went dark, causing the collapse of my personal section of the
global network and the loss of a considerable number of digital book,
including a highly valuable Chukchi grammar.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">To
make things worse, I was barely recovering from a nasty and costly
break up and the state of my finances was far from optimum, so to
replace my computer I had to have an interesting, if somewhat tiring,
talk with my banker – I needed a laptop for my political activities
so doing without was not an option.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
first lesson of this story is that having a mug of tea too close to
your computer when your cat is chasing an imaginary mouse is a bad
idea. The second lesson is that the so-called immaterial economy is
highly dependent upon very material devices and infrastructures and
is very likely to crumble when those devices and infrastructures can
no longer be built or maintained.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRKwyLMVTmPfqh3cjPnY8x5x89Wui_1w6_ClhR397ulP4ejNMJqlpDgS3AQhCBF7TrTFIiWNBRJiGXNyRkea73VhVOw3P_FgMrbRfCSfkJ84zjwTkIRHxzJZUXYWw9yzMuCozrj-clEU8/s1600/Difference_engine.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRKwyLMVTmPfqh3cjPnY8x5x89Wui_1w6_ClhR397ulP4ejNMJqlpDgS3AQhCBF7TrTFIiWNBRJiGXNyRkea73VhVOw3P_FgMrbRfCSfkJ84zjwTkIRHxzJZUXYWw9yzMuCozrj-clEU8/s320/Difference_engine.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It is
possible to build a computer with XVIII<sup>th</sup> century
technology, even if it will be costly. The concept was first
described in 1795 by J. H. Müller, an engineer in the Hessian army
and in 1822 Charles Babbage tried to build a mechanical computer –
the difference engine - on behalf of the British government. The
stated goal was to produce cheap tables, a time consuming and
expensive job then. Unfortunately, the standards were so exacting
that Babbage ended up spending twice the price of a ship of the line
without producing a working prototype and the government finally
killed the project.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Babbage
then moved on to another, more complex, project : the analytical
engine. The analytical engine, albeit entirely mechanical, was more
advanced than the computers of the late forties. It had a “memory”
of 16,7 kb and used a programming language akin to assembly language,
which allowed for loops and conditional branching. The analytical
engine was never built but recent experiments have shown that it
could have been with the technology of the time.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The idea
may have been even older. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
a kind of small-sized mechanical computer, was discovered in the
wreck of of a Greek ship from the fourth century BC. It was
apparently designed to make astronomical calculations. It seems not
to have been the only one of its kind.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Mechanical
computers of various kind have been used up to the sixties, mostly
for research, military or navigation purposes. Thus, the physicist
Henry Fermi used a mechanical computer to model neutron transport and
the economist William Phillips designed an hydraulic computer (the
Moniac computer) to simulate a national economy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Mechanical
or hydraulic computers have their limitation and I seriously doubt
you could play Europa Universalis III on one of them or store your
collection of paleo-asiatic grammars in their memory. It is quite
possible, however, to perform complex computations with them and that
beats doing them by hand.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFHNy1fmPVcfnOhu9dXvGt5lwWKOfL5oPwUoDsBeIJDUk6TsFHz0VwenG8P0d_QForXuZUmMcR4kuSqLNnuKUTmWdrJkOhn3MX7yH0RntWHRQ_6tOg55ClStSSDp1WDt9KyAyUV0MfrEM/s1600/MONIAC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFHNy1fmPVcfnOhu9dXvGt5lwWKOfL5oPwUoDsBeIJDUk6TsFHz0VwenG8P0d_QForXuZUmMcR4kuSqLNnuKUTmWdrJkOhn3MX7yH0RntWHRQ_6tOg55ClStSSDp1WDt9KyAyUV0MfrEM/s320/MONIAC.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Mechanical
computers are definitely one of those technology we should get
through the coming Dark Age. They will be of great use to an
ecotechnic society and relatively easy to manufacture in a
resource-poor world.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As for
build a world-wide-web with them, however... well, it could be
possible to build a continent spanning network of canals carrying
information for a collection of hydraulic computers, but I feel it
would be somehow impractical on a planet where water tends to pour
down the sky with very inconvenient regularity.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Digital
computer are far more convenient in that matter. The problem is that
they require a lot of rare material to be build. Silicium is arguably
very common but to purify it to the level it can be seeded with
germanium, you need a relatively high technology and a lot of
resources. Should you manage to preserve that, you will still need
tantalium for condensators and rare earth metals for screens and hard
disks, and of course a lot of copper for an awful lot of wires.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">To make
things worse, your networks have to be maintained and your computer
powered. Unlike, for instance, a hydraulic computer, digital
computers need continuous inflow of high grade energy to remain
useful. In a world where brownouts, then blackouts will become more
and more common, this will make their use quite problematic and even
outright impossible in some areas.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As the
core limits, then withdraws, power availability in peripheral regions
to preserve itself, computer use is bound to decline and the digital
economy to retreats, until it becomes restricted to a few industrial
and political centers. The rest of us will have to do with pens and
paper and get the boardgame version of Europa Universalis out of its
shelf yes, it was a boardgame at the beginning.)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxdXtXMHQ4PQI_Nwr9myA0xthlrcWXtqm4Poy5-nc95ZZ3EopvJOrn-b5dnvYtr5wq5G1_Y1F53zogtkfduT1CMV3CoLw5zOen6j94ZIZ257UxZn97hM_3FIssZTEnXcTmNonLY1Rf9nQ/s1600/Cn_infrastruktura-1-.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxdXtXMHQ4PQI_Nwr9myA0xthlrcWXtqm4Poy5-nc95ZZ3EopvJOrn-b5dnvYtr5wq5G1_Y1F53zogtkfduT1CMV3CoLw5zOen6j94ZIZ257UxZn97hM_3FIssZTEnXcTmNonLY1Rf9nQ/s320/Cn_infrastruktura-1-.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Besides,
neither satellites nor cables are eternal. They are bound to break
down at some point and will need to be replaced or repaired. This
will become increasingly difficult as the pool of resource and the
energy supply available to the society shrinks. When the Soviet Union
collapsed, for instance, the Soviet equivalent of the Global
Positioning System, Glonass, was neglected by a government, which
struggled to pay for its own survival. It quickly fell in disrepair
and in 2001 only 6 satellites out of 24 were still in working order.
The system has since recovered, has Russia has done, but, but the
fate of Glonass shows what happens to complex infrastructure once the
society, which has built it can no longer maintain it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">You can
expect a similar evolution with the internet. First, the network will
become unable to keep up with the rising demand, and price measures
will be implemented to limit said demand – there already has been
attempts to do so, but governments, afraid of the impact upon the
public opinion, have managed to thwart them, so far.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Then, as
our ability to maintain our infrastructures declines, accidents will
happen and the Eliott effect will fragment the Internet, one cable at
the time. My opinion is that the transoceanic cables will be the
first to go, isolating whole regions and forcing them to go off-line
indefinitely or to organize their own continental version of the
Internet; Those localized Internets will then fragment further, due
to economic or political crisis, war or accident, losing usefulness
at every step of the process. At the end, the Internet will become a
collection of unconnected regional networks, with little added value
compared to a standard library, and will morph into a mere
administrative tool for whatever remains of the local governments.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">At some
points, most such network fill fall in disrepair and be terminated,
as the Minitel (a French precursor of the Internet) will be in a few
days from now. Others may linger on, in particularly stable and rich
areas until the last digital computers die. Those networks will,
however, very different from those we are accustomed to, text-rich
rather than pictures rich, and you will be quite unlikely to find
your favorite movie on them – yes, even that kind of favorite
movie.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">For my
French readers, it will be reminiscent of the Minitel (and yes, it
may include that kind of service) and of the text-based network
featured in Avalon. Needless to say, such shrunken networks won't
provide the “immaterial” economy with the market it needs to
thrive. It is bound to decline along with the Internet, probably
specializing in niche activities.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">By the
way, the Dark Net won't fare any better. The Tor Network, Freenet or
the parallel networks used by mafias may be secretive , they rely
upon the same highly material infrastructures as the the rest of the
web and will fragment as they do, which will incidentally make them
far easier to monitor and control.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Then the
local equivalent of Eliott will spot a mouse on the other side of the
table and begin to leap around... and the rest of us will have to
learn to compute with cranks, valves and pumps.</span></div>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-78827878376243924992012-05-18T09:36:00.000-07:002012-05-18T09:36:52.133-07:00The shadow of fascism<style type="text/css">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgidY6Epxe1sN2flhr7L_Z_LZOHgj2cdtol8OPDOEePXNkyvi9qyQ4dC71zM8rCNRdtCjeHAKfK17K7G0oSf9kGKeoMEDdBVxbK2ilPX_6uD8vRYhtfZM757AemsbwEFXW5vMN1ieLwotU/s1600/Front_National_2010-05-01_n03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgidY6Epxe1sN2flhr7L_Z_LZOHgj2cdtol8OPDOEePXNkyvi9qyQ4dC71zM8rCNRdtCjeHAKfK17K7G0oSf9kGKeoMEDdBVxbK2ilPX_6uD8vRYhtfZM757AemsbwEFXW5vMN1ieLwotU/s320/Front_National_2010-05-01_n03.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
presidential election is over, and the result has been exactly what
was expected : the <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">"</span>socialist<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">"</span>candidate
won over the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, even if by a relatively small
margin. All elections, however, have their share of surprises, and
this one was no exception, since the far-right leader Marine Le Pen
scored nearly 18%, better than her father in 2002 when he shocked the
world by reaching the second round. This is by no way an isolated
phenomenon. The very same Sunday Hollande was elected, the Greeks
sent to their parliament 21 activists from the Golden Dawn, a fringe
far-right party, complete with a svatiska-like symbol and roman
salutes. Add to that Hungary, whose constitution the right wing
government has recently changed in a decidedly authoritarian
direction and the 17% scored in the Netherlands by Geert Wilders’
Party for Freedom, and it becomes obvious Europe has a far right
problem.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Marine
Le Pen’s National Front is no newcomer in French politics. It was
founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen to unify the then marginal
French far right. The Far right has a long history in France and was
at time a significant force. The nationalist leagues nearly seized
power in 1934 when a corruption scandal, the Stavisky case,
degenerated into riots. They had, of course, their moment in the sun
when Hitler’s panzers crashed through the Bulge and allowed them to
rule a rump French State from Vichy. The collapse of Nazi Germany
dealt them a crushing blow, however, as their leaders were killed in
action, shot for treason or forced to run for the Spanish border.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
Algerian war and the confused impotence of the late Fourth Republic
gave the far right a new lease of life. It proved short-lived,
however, as Charles de Gaulle, who had belonged to the monarchist
<i>Action Française</i> but had later joined the moderate right,
seized power through a quasi-coup and abandoned Algeria. The far
right attempted to topple him during the failed Alger coup of 1971
and, for a time, waged a vicious, but ultimately doomed low intensity
terrorist campaign.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">When Le
Pen made his 1972 bid, the far right had been reduced to a rag-tag
collection of fringe groups and intellectuals. While he managed,
progressively and with much difficulty, to rally the far right around
himself, Le Pen electoral results were dismal. In the 1974
presidential election he won a mere 0,8% of the national vote and
failed to gather enough support to stand in the 1981 election.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1oklxJ1ykJPGSTVTR-67EAJBVTelvH8il8fbxSzaVFWbT-iAF1kmMHnnT-Q19DNAZUn4bE7m8b8XC2FpJY9Qcdw2VQYXIkgCN48prcUvZ9kdSAjB35jymNocV1LLy9C_ko5NrKACuw-c/s1600/512px-20101221_Xrysh_Avgi_Komotini_Greece_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1oklxJ1ykJPGSTVTR-67EAJBVTelvH8il8fbxSzaVFWbT-iAF1kmMHnnT-Q19DNAZUn4bE7m8b8XC2FpJY9Qcdw2VQYXIkgCN48prcUvZ9kdSAjB35jymNocV1LLy9C_ko5NrKACuw-c/s320/512px-20101221_Xrysh_Avgi_Komotini_Greece_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
breakthrough happened in the 1983 municipal elections, and most
importantly in the Dreux by election, in October of the same year,
when the National Front won 17% of the vote and forced the moderate
right to make a deal with it to stave off defeat. This put the
National Front under the spotlights and paved the way for later
successes, the most important of which was, of course, the much
publicized, 2002 presidential election.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Democratic
parties reacted by establishing a kind of <i>cordon sanitaire </i><span style="font-style: normal;">around
the National Front. Most of the time it worked. The moderate right,
then dominated by staunchly gaullist Jacques Chirac, did not yield
to the temptation and the 1983 deal was never repeated. It has to be
said, however, that Le Pen himself did not want to take part to a
coalition government. He was fully aware that his party thrived in
radical opposition to the establishment and every time an alliance
with a mainstream party became remotely possible, he spurted
something utterly unfashionable about Jews, the Holocaust or the
German army. This proved quite efficient.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Unfortunately,
his daughter is more interested in ruling than he was, and knows that
her only chance to get into power is by having the moderate right so
soundly defeated that a part of it look to her for support, hardly an
implausible scenario. The leaders of right are very much aware of the
risk and have promised to expel anybody who would dare to strike a
deal with the National Front. This may not be enough, however.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
problem is the National Front, like most of its Western European
counterparts, is not really fascist. It is xenophobic and
authoritarian, and would make France a very unpleasant place if
allowed to reach power. Should this happen I am of the opinion that
it ought to be overthrown by any mean necessary. Even though the most
lunatic ones have been marginalized or even expelled when Marine Le
Pen was given the leadership of the party, a significant part of its
core membership is fascist, or heavily influenced by fascism. There
is also a sizable number of catholic traditionalists and of
unreconstructed <i>pieds-noirs</i> and even a few eccentrics, who
will talk to you about their Indo-European heritage before walking
away toward the nearest forest.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
ideology of the National Front, however, is closer to Cesarism –
aka, the man on the white horse – than to <i>bona fide</i> fascism.
For instance, Marine Le Pen, even though her policies would
undoubtedly be highly oppressive and unpleasant, does not plan to
change the constitution in any major way. It is partly due to the
fact that this constitution, even though it has accumulated some
checks and balances over time, has been drafted by another man on
the white horse after what amounted to a military coup, but not only.
Cesarism is perfectly compatible with a constitutional regime, as
generations of Latin-American strongmen have shown.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Cesarism,
in France at least, happens when the political system is faced with
what seems to be an unsolvable contradiction. Napoleon the First had
to reconciliate an unstable regime born from a radical revolution and
a people longing for internal stability. His nephew had to manage the
contradiction between a liberal republic and a deeply conservative
population; Lastly, De Gaulle, a conservative with a monarchist
background, had to solve the contradiction between an impotent
parliamentarian regime and the need for decisive action during the
shedding of an ever more cumbersome colonial empire.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">France
was lucky in that its strongmen’s domestic policies have succeeded,
often in sharp contrast with the disastrous results of their foreign
policies. As Napoleon himself stated : <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">"</span><i>Waterloo
will wipe out the memory of my forty victories; but that which
nothing can wipe out is my Civil Code. That will live forever.</i><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>"</i></span>
Cesarism can however be an abject failure, especially when the
contradiction it faces is not wholly political in nature.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Thus,
during the last decades of the nineteenth century, the newly
established Third Republic had to contend with the consequences of
the defeat of 1870. To ensure its survival in face of strong
monarchist opposition, the Republic needed the lost provinces of
Alsace – Lorraine back, but lacked the military force to reconquer
them. It was not a political problem. Germany, once united, had a
larger population and resource base than France. Besides, France’s
low birth rate made sure the power gap would only increase with time.
The only way out for the French Republic was to build an alliance
strong enough to match German might – a strategy which ultimately
won WWI, but took time.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUeN4o5bJtL9oW5rhD3wV8MmFpUYafXMTKLe6VkmgIRXX0DAeOfZwvm9wttHGN1tH57Yn_N80v9uPDpU6kNHbJJMjEE9s5HsrSgIaWgQIgX7gtdjN1qbclcLagB3ndER7DoVdzb9r89ME/s1600/Boulanger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUeN4o5bJtL9oW5rhD3wV8MmFpUYafXMTKLe6VkmgIRXX0DAeOfZwvm9wttHGN1tH57Yn_N80v9uPDpU6kNHbJJMjEE9s5HsrSgIaWgQIgX7gtdjN1qbclcLagB3ndER7DoVdzb9r89ME/s320/Boulanger.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">A
significant part of the French public opinion wanted their <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">revenge</span>
now, however, and they found their hero in the person of Georges
Ernest Boulanger, a general, who, as a war minister, stood up to
Bismarck during the Schnaebele incident, nearly causing a war France
would certainly have lost. This made him immensely popular and got
him, and a lot of his followers elected. He let the occasion pass,
however, failed to make his move, and his movement collapsed.
Boulanger himself had to flee to Belgium and finally committed
suicide on his lover’s grave. Georges Clémenceau rightly said
about him : <i>He died as he has lived: a second lieutenant. </i></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Had
he lived as a general, however, the results would have been a
unmitigated disaster, at least as far as France is concerned.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Whether
Marine Le Pen will live and die as a second lieutenant remains to be
seen. Her party is still a associated, despite the recent purges,
with the nightmarish regimes of the thirties, and that matters a lot
down here. Besides, cracking down on a significant and growing
minority because it happens to have a different religion, a highly
questionable idea in itself, is unlikely to make you popular in many
areas.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Even
if she gets elected and survive the reaction of those, such as
myself, who think that her very participation to a government is a
good reason to storm the prefecture and set up a committee of public
salvation, she is bound to fail.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
main problem France faces is the growing impotence of politics.
France, unlike America, has always relied on the State, and therefore
the politicians who control it, to get things done. Yet, after the
election of the socialist François Mitterand in 1981 and the great
wave of reforms he initiated, the State became ever less able to do
anything more than reluctantly go along a progressive but steady
decline or implement purely societal reforms such as civil unions.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
result has been a general distrust of politicians, an ever lower
turnout during elections and the occasional burst of enthusiasm for
anybody looking like he could actually do something, for instance
Sarkozy in 2007.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
problem, of course, is that this impotence is neither due to the
nature of the regime – French presidents are quite powerful in
practice – nor to the incompetence of the political class – the
service of the State is a valued occupation in French culture, so our
rulers tend to be highly experienced and educated – but to limits
to complexity and lack of resource.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Like
all countries, France has greatly increased its social complexity
thanks to the exploitation of fossil fuels and industrialization. The
huge surplus thus created has enabled it to feed what would be an
insanely complex society by medieval standards. As Joseph Tainter has
shown, increased complexity is our specie’s preferred way of
solving problems, and at first it is quite efficient. Since it means
creating corps of specialists for every possible task, however, it is
costly. Besides, complexity and specialization is subject to the law
of decreasing returns : at some point, increasing them becomes far
more costly than it is worth and may even become counterproductive.
France, whose strength traditionally lay in its efficient
administration, has manifestly reached this point. The state budget
has been in structural deficit for decades and massive unemployment
has been a fact of life since I was born.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Increasing
the already insanely high level of complexity of our society,, for
instance by investing in the so called knowledge economy will only
worsen the situation, as it will create new structures – public or
corporate, that's not the matter – feeding off a stagnant, or even
shrinking resource pool.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Resource
is the other problem. France was never the richest European country
and its natural resources have been strip mined during the industrial
age. We never had oil, our coal, natural gas and uranium are long
gone – a part of it with Algeria, by the way. We have managed to
keep and expand our wealth by being a, somewhat troublesome, part of
the western imperial system, funneling a large part of the world
resources our way and exploiting our own mini-network of client
republics, which, of course did not keep our rather embarrassing
surplus of bobos from bitching about imperialism.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsYui5YgRh7maMU17Zm3IiP_JxJ7rNCmkBU-X-QpcMaveb8rsCwznpJU-l4EpD5Hmr1z0BEe34Ysj0nb334cJX-OwMyCh6i2a3QUU28dv5fFzrF6JYi_wa55ckSuGF_ig6vTVAaERfB00/s1600/Primo-de-rivera.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsYui5YgRh7maMU17Zm3IiP_JxJ7rNCmkBU-X-QpcMaveb8rsCwznpJU-l4EpD5Hmr1z0BEe34Ysj0nb334cJX-OwMyCh6i2a3QUU28dv5fFzrF6JYi_wa55ckSuGF_ig6vTVAaERfB00/s1600/Primo-de-rivera.JPG" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This
strategy is now failing. We have reached the point where global
energy supply is stagnating. It will soon begin to decrease in
absolute value and has probably already begun to do so if we
consider the net value. The result is a fiercer competition for the
remaining resources, a competition a middling European state with
little projection power is unlikely to win.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Besides,
it seems the people we helped win their independence at Yorktown are
being replaced, as world hegemon, by those whose most magnificent
monument we thoroughly ransacked in an effort to force sell them
opium. The chance of them allowing us to continue with our little
protection racket in Africa are minute.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">And
even if they were so inclined... they really need the oil, and the
land, and the uranium, and...</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
end result is that our capacity to bring about collective change
decreases with every passing year – at least the kind of collective
change the French people can accept. It is quite possible to simplify
the French society, but that means accepting, even embracing,
poverty, not something we as a people are likely to do.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Authoritarianism
is therefore bound to fail, and become more and more authoritarian
with time as, unlike democracy, failure is not something it can
accept. Its normal way of dealing with it is not handing power to the
other side, but finding somebody to blame. After all, if it is not
the Great Leader's fault, and it cannot be, it must be some
traitor's, and we all know what to do with traitors.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
problem is that our newly elected president is also bound to fail.
Democracy is very good at mobilizing its resources in face of a clear
and immediate danger – say, Nazi Germany – but quite bad at
facing a long crisis without any clear solution. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">There
is no solution to the crisis we face, and as long as we expect
politics to change things in a constructive way, we are bound to be
disappointed. At some point, this disappointment is likely to lead us
to vote for an extremist who will get (some) things done. (S)he won't
be fascist – fascism as an ideology is discredited – but will use
the same dynamics Boulanger did, and may, by the way, come from the
left; The leader of the Left Front, Jean-Luc Melenchon, is every bit
as dangerous as Le Pen and a Green authoritarianism remains a
distinct possibility.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It
is what happened in Greece with the Golden Dawn and Alexis Tsipras'
Coalition of the Radical Left. Unless we collectively accept the
reality and allow our false dreams to die, it can happen here too.</span></div>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-31096205565196924132012-04-21T11:35:00.000-07:002012-04-23T01:05:58.347-07:00Party politics<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">The
electoral campaign in France is nearing its end and we </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">already</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> know the
outcome. A few months ago, I would have said that the incumbent
president's only chance was an islamist spree killer shooting at
random in the middle of a schoolyard. The problem is that an islamist
spree killer did shoot at random in the middle of a schoolyard and
that didn't improve Nicolas Sarkozy's already minute chances of
getting reelected.</span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">His
forced retirement won't really be a disaster for France. Even if his
probable replacement is also likely to fail, he will do so in a much
gentler way. Sarkozy wanted to be great and there is no place for
greatness in times of decline.</span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">There
is more to this election than a rat race for an already empty power,
however.</span></span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="color: white;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">When
General De Gaulle decided in 1961 that French presidents would </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">henceforth </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">be
elected by the people, and no longer by the parliament, he
wanted to reduce the influence of political parties upon the life of
the nation and create a direct relationship between the people and
its leader.</span></span></span></div>
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</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">It
has been a failure.</span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">It
would be stupid to deny that the personality of a candidate has an
influence upon the result of an election, but it has become
increasingly difficult to be elected without the support of a major
party - another layer of complexity in a society which has
accumulated an embarrassing surplus of them.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: white;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="color: white; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Political
parties are dizzyingly diverse, ranging from the little disciplined
American electoral machines to the totalitarian para-bureaucracies of
the so-called socialist states. They all emerged during the
nineteenth century from parliamentary factions, revolutionary more or
less secret societies or even lobbies. In Britain, the two first
parties – the Whigs and the Torries – coalesced formally in 1784
around Charles James Fox and William Pitt the Younger, respectively,
even though the ideas they represented date back to to the Glorious
Revolution and the advent of the Hanoverian dynasty.</span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">In
the United States, the two first organized political parties, the
Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties emerged around 1792 and more or less reflected their English counterparts, as
Thomas Jefferson stated in a letter to John Wise : </span></span></span>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Two
political Sects have arisen within the U. S. the one believing that
the executive is the branch of our government which the most needs
support; the other that like the analogous branch in the English
Government, it is already too strong for the republican parts of the
Constitution; and therefore in equivocal cases they incline to the
legislative powers: the former of these are called federalists,
sometimes aristocrats or monocrats, and sometimes tories, after the
corresponding sect in the English Government of exactly the same
definition: the latter are stiled republicans, whigs, jacobins,
anarchists, disorganizers, etc. these terms are in familiar use with
most persons. </span></i></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Those
early political parties, both in America and Britain were structured
around local and national leaders, rather than around mass of
activists and party discipline was lax, to say the least. In both
countries electoral franchise was limited to a small percentage of
the population and since both countries were reasonably orderly,
there was little point in trying to control the crowds.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFiKAsE0A4Uc1h37ddgXXwkn1I0foG4Gm1WQIss0Kg5XVyypgW3YRishkN84RrOSYJ0D_WZJoxg2O_8e-I8gqXtgbQG1guEdzO3PkSzPTEKbN2WyK6qmHfO8IYUl_UpQIxFkebDQSWE2k/s1600/1904socialist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFiKAsE0A4Uc1h37ddgXXwkn1I0foG4Gm1WQIss0Kg5XVyypgW3YRishkN84RrOSYJ0D_WZJoxg2O_8e-I8gqXtgbQG1guEdzO3PkSzPTEKbN2WyK6qmHfO8IYUl_UpQIxFkebDQSWE2k/s320/1904socialist.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">France,
as always, begged to differ. At the time of the French Revolution, it
was ruled by a corrupt and bankrupt absolute monarchy headed by the
weakest king in a century – a dangerous combination, at best. As a
result, France’s transition to democracy was very chaotic, to say
the least, and wasn’t completed until the fall of the Second Empire
in 1870. All French regimes from 1789 to 1871 ended in violence,
either insurrection or invasion. Fighting for change at that time
meant exactly that : shooting at rather uncooperative troopers from
behind a barricade. While France was only intermittently a real
dictatorship during this period, opposing the government was still a
dangerous business and republican meeting were banned more often than
not – which prompted radicals to start a feasting campaign, with
very long-winded toasts, a tradition which still survives in some
circles to this day.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, when both you and the Police know that the only way you can
achieve your goals is by storming the royal or imperial palace, you
are more likely to invest in conspiratorial cells and shooting skills
than in party building. As for the supporters of whatever
semi-authoritarian regime held the power at any given time, they
relied upon loose parliamentarian coalitions, old boy networks and
the continued influence of local notables.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It was
only in 1901, after the definitive victory of the republicans, that
the first classical French political party was formally established :
the Radical Party, which, by the way, was anything but radical and is
now mostly known for its attachment to secularism and its love of
feasting. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The left
followed its own way toward the establishment of organized
parties after the debacle of the Commune (the last Parisian
insurrection, crushed in 1871). The first socialist party, the
<i>Fédération des travailleurs socialistes de France</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
was founded in 1878 by the Marxist Jules Guesde but split in the wake
of electoral disaster.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
socialist movement remained divided into a collection of often rival
groups until its reunification around Jean Jaures in 1905 in the
</span><i>Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
out of which both the French Communist Party and François Hollande's
Socialist Party latter emerged.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
left, had no network of notables to rely upon, however. Its roots lay
in the Parisian tradition of insurrections, the nascent unions and
the work of radical intellectuals such as Marx, Proudhon or Bakunin.
Its goal was not to rule the country through parliamentary work but
to take over it by organizing the people and uniting it around a
common ideology.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">This
called for a very specific kind of organization, more reminiscent of
a government than of a gentlemen's club, with a top down chain of
command and a strict party discipline. Policies were defined in
regular conventions rather than in local caucuses and elected
officials were considered mandatees of the organization rather than
notables with their own relatively independent power base.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Where,
in the Republican movement, policies were debated in local clubs and
masonic lodges – a major force in early twentieth century France –
formation (read indoctrination ) was a key element in socialist
strategy.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">And
of course, it still had something of a conspiratorial mindset, an
attitude which will flourish in Lenin's Bolshevik Party.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">This
model was soon hijacked by the other radical force in French
society : the revolutionary right which was beginning to replace the
old reactionary and aristocratic right, which had until then led the
fight against the heritage of the French Revolution. Born from the
unholy alliance of German Romanticism and of a few heretical sections
of the French left, this new current birthed Italian fascism and its
German monster child : National-Socialism.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">For
totalitarian movements in Berlin, Roma or Moscow, mass parties, as
developed by the left, were very convenient and provided the blueprint for the
fanatical political armies which roamed Europe during the thirties
and the forties. This pattern continued long after the war in Communist
parties all over Europe. Quite often, their strategies where decided
in Moscow and local activist's only prerogatives were to implement them, to that point that
a minister could say that the Communist Party was not on the left,
but on the east.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">There
was, however, another factor at work. The flow of cheap and abundant
energy that flooded our society after the industrial revolution
triggered a fantastic wave of growth and complexification in all
organizations, and political parties were no exception. As more
resources were available in the society at large, political parties
could divert more and more of them to feed their internal
bureaucracy.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">At
first the rational was to get things done, or better done, by hiring
professionals often recruited among activists, and it is not absurd.
Even my own, tiny and ineffectual party, has developed a
mini-bureaucracy paid for by state subsidies (the French state grants
money to political parties in function of their electoral results),
elected officials' wages' or even public money, as elected officials
may have assistant which will be used for party business.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
result is that sooner or later, the necessity to feed the bureaucracy
will supersede any other concern and the bureaucracy itself will
become a major player in internal politics. Of course, the bottom up
elaboration of policies through local clubs and debates could not
survive this evolution and was replaced by the interplay of
ideological factions and think tanks.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Now
the decisions about what is to be debated in electoral campaigns are made by professional politicians and small coteries of party
bureaucrats under the influence of lobbies of often dubious
representativity. The only thing the population can do is getting
interested, or not.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">This is
one of the reasons why peak oil, and more generally resource issues,
played no role in the French presidential campaign, despite Jean-Marc
Jeancovici's courageous but ultimately futile appeal. Neither party
leaders nor their entourage of bureaucrats and advisers were
interested in raising them, for the same reason they were
uninterested in talking seriously about the debt. They would have had
to promise the Moon – and we already have a Larouchie for that –
or speaking hard truths to a population, which, they believe, is not
ready to hear them.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Unfortunately,
it is not going to change. Peak energy and the subsequent resource
shrinkage will reduce the amount of wealth available, but, if there
is something history teaches us, it is that those in power will use
their not inconsiderable influence to minimize the impact of a crisis
upon their own income.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Political
parties, their leaders and their bureaucrats are not the only
powerful organizations in French society, but they control most of
the political debate, which means they will do everything to ensure
the survival of their apparatus and will most probably succeed
despite the growing distrust of the population. And yes, that is
also true for our own bureaucracy, a bureaucracy I belong to, by the
way, even I happen to be on the wrong side of a factional divide.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">This
is, by the way, not a conspiracy, even if there are a lot of cynics
in the political world. Politicians are great at self-delusion and
sincerely think that the party bureaucracy is indispensable to the
furthering of goals they sincerely think are good for the country. As
for party bureaucrats, they are often as dependent upon their job as
your average corporate ladder-climber. Most of them are trapped in a
career they chose by idealism long before divorce and mortgages
raised their ugly heads.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">What
that means, also, is that even those who talk about participatory
democracy are very unlikely to implement it, because it would mean
renouncing their power and accepting the shrinkage of their own
income – I don't know of any group in history, which has done that.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Of
course, at some point, when peak energy will make the situation
intolerable for common people and the political establishment's
promises as hollow as a dentist's, this will disastrously backfire
and bring a strongman or another into power. We may even have a
lamppost day or two.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">What
we are unlikely to have, however, is what we need : a return to a
community based democracy with a continuous dialogue between th</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">e
mandators and a mandatee, who will answer only to them, not to party bureaucrats such as myself.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-57768969121636272462012-03-29T01:37:00.002-07:002013-05-02T07:03:35.956-07:00Disunited Kingdoms<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGEftiW3GzEJjj4epZ9-jQTKoZFjMneohNGDmFsWEKLxYhu80ilPGq37zL4QDbpksKahkT7lgyuCmz8KOzE2fKlsV7ZqrYW7jX4ZNzZmhEhUkmHYG_Dz73jqITavAZB_BtsVQ0kDuOOk/s1600/The_Battle_of_Culloden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGEftiW3GzEJjj4epZ9-jQTKoZFjMneohNGDmFsWEKLxYhu80ilPGq37zL4QDbpksKahkT7lgyuCmz8KOzE2fKlsV7ZqrYW7jX4ZNzZmhEhUkmHYG_Dz73jqITavAZB_BtsVQ0kDuOOk/s320/The_Battle_of_Culloden.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In 2014, Scotland will decide whether it should leave the United Kingdom or not. At this point, the pro-independence opinion is still a minority, even though the unionist parties do their best to make it a majority by the time the referendum is held. Should Alex Salmond win his gambit, a new state would appear on maps of Europe, probably the first of a long series.</span><br />
<br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, the maps of Europe have been anything but static in the last seventy years. The collapse of the Soviet Union has spawned a bevy of newly independent republics, not all of which survived infancy, and the banks of the Dniester is still controlled by what one may diplomatically call an unrecognized state : Transnistria A few core western states have shed territories during this time period. Denmark has had to let Iceland go in 1944 and France has left Algeria in 1962 – I know it sounds weird but at the time it was considered a part of France and a significant French population lived there.</span><br />
<br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Those were just cases of states in relative decline losing control of their periphery, however. Denmark had lost its colonies in India to Britain during the 19th century and sold its last American possessions to the United States in 1917. France had been militarily defeated in Indochina and even though it held the upper hand in Algeria, it could not politically sustain a decade long war.</span><br />
<br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The departure of Scotland, like the possible departure of Flanders or Catalonia, is of a different nature. The Scottish Highlands, like Wales or Ireland, were on the periphery of Britain – the so called "Celtic Fringe". The Lowlands, however, were not. It was to gain access to the English market that the Scottish elite agreed to the Treaty of Union in 1706 and their wishes were definitely granted. Until the American Revolution, Glasgow dominated tobacco trade and the Scottish elite eagerly joined the English aristocracy in its pursuit of imperial glory.</span><br />
<br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The losers, of course, were the highlanders, who had maintained a rugged semi-autonomy in the north of the country. The army, which crushed the clans at Culloden included a significant Scottish contingent and the highland clearance, which depopulated the northern counties were done at the order and for the benefit of the Scottish aristocracy.</span><br />
<br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Even now, Edinburgh and Glasgow are large and prosperous cities and the real divide is with the now largely empty Highlands.</span><br />
<br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The break between Scotland and England, like the one between Catalonia and Spain or the one between Wallonia and Flanders, is a break within the core, and there shall be a lot of it while our civilization slides further down Hubbert's curve.</span><br />
<br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Civilizations work by concentrating wealth from the periphery to the core. That is how they gather enough resources to get things done which incidentally means that a little territorial inequality is not necessarily a bad thing if you want to produce some culture somewhere. A fact often overlooked, however, is that civilizations are fractal, that is their low-level structure mirrors their high-level structure. The city of Nantes, where I work may be a periphery to the Parisian region, it is definitely the core of Brittany and while Saint-Nazaire, where I live is a periphery to Nantes, it is the core of the coastal region, and Paris itself is a distant periphery of New-York or Shanghai.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The system holds because everybody, except those who are at the bottom, has an interest in its holding together, and because it is easier to jockey for position inside it than to try and overthrow it, at the risk of being crushed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The various dominant cores dominate their periphery – and are dominated by the cores higher up – through a mix of sharing and dependency, with brute force a very rarely used <i>ultima ratio</i>. How the sharing works is easy to see : subordinate elites get the right to exploit their own periphery, and a small part of the resources funneled upward.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Dependency is more subtle. Basically, the core uses the resources of the periphery to build infrastructures, both material and immaterial, and organize the economy in a way which suits the core’s interests. That means that whatever funds are spent in the periphery further the interests of the core, notably providing it with manpower, specialized services or raw material, or producing goods which will be sold by corporations whose seats are located at the core, and therefore taxed, at least in part, there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The periphery is therefore under the (false) impression, it cannot get by without the help of the core. Of course, this argument will be used to scare the periphery away from autonomy. This has been done in Quebec, for instance, and will doubtlessly be done in Scotland as well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The end of cheap energy and the global shortage of resources which will ensue, shall make things a little more complex, however. It is easy to share resources when they are plentiful. Sharing shortages, however, is far more difficult and we can expect every country, region or city, whatever its place in the national or global hierarchy, to squeeze its periphery, internal or external, to squeeze its periphery for the resources it needs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What this means for Scotland (and Wales, and Northern England, and Wessex), is that its resources – namely dwindling but still sizable oil reserves and rather large investments in wind and wave power – are likely to be funneled southward to prop up an south-eastern English economy which has unwisely bet on globalization and high finance. In a way, it is already happening.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Scottish elite – at least a part of it – is using the tools of nationalism and historical myths to get a better control over its resources (and its own periphery's, we are not in carebears' country) whether it be through full independence or what the SNP calls “devo-max”</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ_an3nj4nb8IRqjBtXG6kFkba22o22_yXtah5m7YI1iVNn9fI2pqPu7OSBK-kVr2F2xYN_E9xowxRxry4dH4qBeCm3CVkJuDOsFy9o4WdJYUvD9rnKeAc4WzScUx_AXny9mf0RMWIgQQ/s1600/Battle_of_Bannockburn_-_Bruce_addresses_troops.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ_an3nj4nb8IRqjBtXG6kFkba22o22_yXtah5m7YI1iVNn9fI2pqPu7OSBK-kVr2F2xYN_E9xowxRxry4dH4qBeCm3CVkJuDOsFy9o4WdJYUvD9rnKeAc4WzScUx_AXny9mf0RMWIgQQ/s320/Battle_of_Bannockburn_-_Bruce_addresses_troops.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The outcome, of course, will depend on the respective strengths and weaknesses of the two contending elites and on their ability to manipulate historical myths. Fortunately, nobody intends to use the Kings' last arguments, so the British army should remain in its barracks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There is no shortage, in Europe, of elites, or would be elites, willing to imitate the Scots. Some of them, like the Basques, the Catalans or the Flemings, may succeed. Other won't be so lucky, either because the territories they claim are too dependent, or because they have no national myth to rely upon, or because they are just a bunch of clueless amateurs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Having roamed a few international congresses, I can tell you that the latter category is in no danger of immediate extinction.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, you don't need to have a distinctive culture or identity to be stripped of your resources. Wessex or Northern England are in the same position as Scotland. So are the Scottish Highlands or the Shetlands, relative to Scotland, by the way. It is, of course, possible for, say Cumberland to remember that a Celtic language was spoken in the area until the twelfth century, or for Northern England to discover it used to be a kingdom during the Dark Ages. Let's just say it's likely to remain restricted to a few fringe groups or even individuals.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It is, by the way, the situation of most French regions, for, while regionalism is reasonably common, the groups which defend it are too weak, electorally, ideologically, structurally, to make a difference.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZUAe4CrClf_xtRexv7QeNteWa4u_DnaoDm671MRL_4MLq8T8TK9r9kefIrAnGp6ieRs_TbH5paEkuxsNNKDIi74nvPJS6F3bJ3qjUJn4M0ZMSDVOThINQX3RVsZzRPgOiQdfPJsOi70Y/s1600/Ormaig.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZUAe4CrClf_xtRexv7QeNteWa4u_DnaoDm671MRL_4MLq8T8TK9r9kefIrAnGp6ieRs_TbH5paEkuxsNNKDIi74nvPJS6F3bJ3qjUJn4M0ZMSDVOThINQX3RVsZzRPgOiQdfPJsOi70Y/s320/Ormaig.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The most likely outcome its that wherever it is possible, the core will squeeze its peripheries to further its existence, leaving only poverty and chaos in its wake. When the core will fail, the old periphery will probably be not only impoverished and depopulated, but also broken as a society and politically chaotic for centuries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ironically, it is a similar process, which enabled the old highland clans to rise after the devastation and the chaos brought by the wars of independence of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am not sure the result will be everywhere as colorful, however.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There is no easy way out of this conundrum, and in fact, the only way for a peripheral territory to win is to opt out of the game : embrace the decline, turn to the domestic economy and to local production and consumption. This, however, amounts to embracing poverty to avoid misery further down the road, and I frankly doubt the regionalist groups I know are prepared to that, even those which claim to be ecologist.</span></div>
Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-943686407251088092012-03-19T08:25:00.001-07:002012-03-20T07:45:56.660-07:00Speaking of France<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbh1uo6TU8U5crktTB63bUYvokxWr6Ig0cdpa-FzdP0cb3kubwERbrrQ1-sVda1r2eGJUeYajlqBNoD1O1Dnt2XtY3KeQmW0HuwyTIbIBADFYO1wh2HBlkwj4FCFJ9Kxgu8PHHfF-hViM/s1600/Solde-budgetaire-France.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbh1uo6TU8U5crktTB63bUYvokxWr6Ig0cdpa-FzdP0cb3kubwERbrrQ1-sVda1r2eGJUeYajlqBNoD1O1Dnt2XtY3KeQmW0HuwyTIbIBADFYO1wh2HBlkwj4FCFJ9Kxgu8PHHfF-hViM/s1600/Solde-budgetaire-France.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnKKoPg9QEseWEBL8IGgt1YxDSLRhofw8setSEvHKa5ND4L98JuMHex2Imkxkp4FoMFcuG5Oo_lWxJro2zG2QeS8Jkqvh-0CWkNrGMYXVcR-61Y7BVMj8xs_AdBC2Efv98XLim9DSpKr4/s1600/Louis_XIV_of_France.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnKKoPg9QEseWEBL8IGgt1YxDSLRhofw8setSEvHKa5ND4L98JuMHex2Imkxkp4FoMFcuG5Oo_lWxJro2zG2QeS8Jkqvh-0CWkNrGMYXVcR-61Y7BVMj8xs_AdBC2Efv98XLim9DSpKr4/s320/Louis_XIV_of_France.jpg" width="225" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">France is an interesting case. It was long the most populous state in Europe and the main rival of England, then Britain for the title of world hegemon. Unlike Britain, however, it did not face the open sea but large and powerful kingdoms, whose alliance finally thwarted its ambitions, first at Blenheim in 1704, then at Waterloo in 1815; It then began to slowly decline, the way failed empires do. Unable to prevent German unification, it steadily lost ground and became an admittedly unruly American ally after World War II. If peak energy wasn't looming, it would become just another minor country dreaming of its glorious past while history is written elsewhere.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That would not necessarily have been a bad thing. This is what happened to Athens after the Roman conquest. Deprived of what remained of its political independence, the city had become a prosperous cultural center, leading a quiet and protected life, far from the Empire's battlefields.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Such won't be our fate, however.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In premodern times, France was the prototypic agrarian empire. Born from a warlord state located between the Loire river and the Channel, it came to control some of the best lands in western Europe, which enabled it to feed a large peasant population – a whole quarter of the European population during the Middle-Ages – and field large, well armed and well trained armies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In fact, we probably came very close to a French global empire during the 16th century, when Louis XIV's armies marched on Vienna, only to be crushed by the combined forces of England, Prussia, the Netherlands and Denmark at Blenheim.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It was, however, less well endowed in fossil fuels, which explains its relative decline during the 19th century. France's few coal resources are located along the north-eastern border, which proved quite inconvenient during World War I. It has virtually no oil and very little gas, mostly in Aquitaine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As in other European countries, those resources are mostly depleted. The last coal mines have closed down during the nineties, around the same time, ironically, as the last uranium mines. Only 2% of our gas is extracted in France – mostly around Lacq in Aquitaine - and our oil production is negligible. There may be shale gas around Paris and in Provence, two densely populated regions, but it remains to be seen whether it will ever be exploited. Local populations are quite hostile, economics are dubious at best and the French Parliament has recently banned hydraulic fracturing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To make things worse, the share of renewable energy, even though it is growing, is negligible, the result of decades of underinvestment and of the choice of the country to invest heavily in nuclear power during the seventies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This, of course, is bound to cause problems as the age of cheap abundant energy comes to a end.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">France has, like other developed countries, accumulated an embarrassing surplus of material and immaterial infrastructures : roads, administration, a health system far more efficient than the American one (granted, it's not very difficult), a reasonably efficient education system... After the first oil shock, those infrastructures were increasingly funded by debt. In a growing economy, that was not necessarily a bad idea. After all, if the future is going to be more prosperous than the present, it may as well pay for it. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbh1uo6TU8U5crktTB63bUYvokxWr6Ig0cdpa-FzdP0cb3kubwERbrrQ1-sVda1r2eGJUeYajlqBNoD1O1Dnt2XtY3KeQmW0HuwyTIbIBADFYO1wh2HBlkwj4FCFJ9Kxgu8PHHfF-hViM/s1600/Solde-budgetaire-France.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbh1uo6TU8U5crktTB63bUYvokxWr6Ig0cdpa-FzdP0cb3kubwERbrrQ1-sVda1r2eGJUeYajlqBNoD1O1Dnt2XtY3KeQmW0HuwyTIbIBADFYO1wh2HBlkwj4FCFJ9Kxgu8PHHfF-hViM/s320/Solde-budgetaire-France.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The problem, as we know, is that the future won't be more prosperous than the present, and at some point we are bound to find ourselves in the rather awkward situation of having to pay for the past without getting any subsidies from the future.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">France is a close, if sometimes troublesome, ally of the USA, and even though it gets some benefits from the imperial system, its growth has been consistently inferior to America's and the state budget has been running at a deficit since 1974. Chronic unemployment has been a fact of life for more than forty years now, partly because of weak growth, partly because the French political system favors a protected middle class of civil servants an retirees over the working class.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is only made worse by the structure of the French state itself. France formed by amalgamating small feudal principalities during the middle-ages and by conquering border lands afterward. As a result, all its infrastructures are centered on the capital region, which works as a wealth and manpower pump, extracting resource from the provinces to fund the lifestyle of the Parisian aristocracy and the infrastructures it needs. The railroad network, for instance, is organized around the six big Parisian stations and most big corporations have their seat in Paris, as close as possible to the political power.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Theoretically, most regions receive more from the state than they contribute, but it is an illusion. A great part of the money that flows out from Paris is made of pensions, wages and touristic spending, what we call the residential economy. They increase, not alleviate dependency.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Public spending, notably in education, is aimed at providing the core with the skilled manpower it needs, triggering a permanent brain drain from the periphery toward the Parisian region, and of course, the economy of the periphery is organized according to the need and the interests of the core. Under the guise of “national solidarity”, wealth movements are organized and controlled by the state, which makes the poorest regions yet more dependent on the core and prevents independent accumulation of capital, either human or material.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The result has been a pattern of regional specialization, with the superior functions, and most of the national wealth, concentrated in Paris.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When such a system is faced with a shortage of vital resources, it tends to sacrifice the periphery to preserve the core. This tendency is still stronger in France, for, unlike in America, Germany, China and to a lesser extend Britain, the core coincides with a specific region.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8wfCB4x3Sre4RvhkMGvFoV86fmUsNleMNLNyRp_td_y0fBEnHOk8oqZeJFotwfZOIkH26B3CSjs7UR2yWgo6dcR62H9DvG5XnpxJg0Jr7v6nzRL8G3Jk6JgqpyyC1vko9t6vvuQydtjY/s1600/impop.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8wfCB4x3Sre4RvhkMGvFoV86fmUsNleMNLNyRp_td_y0fBEnHOk8oqZeJFotwfZOIkH26B3CSjs7UR2yWgo6dcR62H9DvG5XnpxJg0Jr7v6nzRL8G3Jk6JgqpyyC1vko9t6vvuQydtjY/s1600/impop.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Faced with a growing dearth of resources, the state has organized the progressive</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">dismantlement of public services in the periphery – mostly in the rural areas, but also in what we call the “suburbs”, urban ghettos where the poorest populations, often of foreign descent, live. This dismantlement take many forms. State run enterprises may be sold off so that their new corporate or quasi-corporate management can restrict their activities and progressively terminate the protective status of their employees. Offices located in small – or even less small towns – can be closed down. Most importantly, charges may be “delegated” to local authorities, while fundings to those very same local authorities are withdrawn and their ability to levy taxes curtailed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Those policies are met with resistance, of course, but not with effective resistance. There has</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> been no general strike in France since 1995 and the state has become better and better at defeating mass protests. The last one, in 2010, opposing a very unpopular reform pushed by a highly unpopular government, mobilized several millions people, yet was a total failure. In fact, the staff of the main opposition party, hoped it to be a failure, so that they be spared the trouble of enacting the same kind of reform once back into power.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The effect of the retreat of the state toward the geographical core are less direct. The resistance is therefore more local, and can be defeated piecemeal. The few victorious struggles, because they only have a local importance, don't break the pattern, and their often hard-won success is bound to be temporary.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Republican ideology, which stills permeates French politics considers indeed the state as the guardian of common good., which means that any locally based resistance to its action is always suspect of parochialism and has to prove, if it wants to be listened to, that it does not only defend the interest of a particular group, but some great principle, which only strengthens the role of the state as the ultimate allocator of resources.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Like the kings of yore, the state cannot willingly do wrong. It can only be ill advised.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Even the political movements which have glimpsed the nature of the Parisian wealth pump, namely the various autonomist, regionalist and separatist movements, which have sprung up in the French periphery, subscribe to this worldview. Those movements have their weakness, structural and ideological, which will probably prevent them from playing a major role, even in local politics, for the foreseeable future outside Corsica, but they could have formed an ideological core around which a real relocalization might have been possible. Nearly all of them, however, insist, that they want a real solidarity between poor and rich provinces. They only want it fairer, which, of course, amounts to acknowledge the legitimacy of the state as the ultimate allocator of resources.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The king cannot do wrong, it can only be ill advised.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The problem is of course deeper, and that is why France is likely to disastrously fail as its resource base shrinks. As long as economic growth was present, the core could pump the resources of the periphery and organize it according to its needs while allowing it to reap some benefit from the system. No matter how exploited, a peripheral region of a central state was still better off than a central region of a peripheral state.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is still true, but as the balance of power at the world level shifts toward China, France will more and more lose its privileged access to resources. It will, therefore, be forced to organize the impoverishment of its own periphery. In most big countries, such a plolicy would be sure to trigger separatist movements, but as I have said, in France, the supremacy of the state is accepted by nearly everyone, including those who might engage in identity politics. Mainstream, and even not so mainstream parties might diverge about the policies the state should enact but its role as the embodiment of the nation is questioned only by the fringe of the fringe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The most likely result will be a growing gap between a privileged but shrinking minority, close enough to the core, whether it be geographical or social, to benefit from the advantages it provides, and a majority which will lose all the riches it had accumulated during the growth years and vent its anger by supporting a populist strongman or another. This is what has happened to the French working class, and it is obvious that the middle class, especially the unprotected middle class is next on the list.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Such an evolution would be deadly for democracy, as sooner or later the disenfranchised crowd would vote some populist into power, or come so close to doing it that force would have to be used “to preserve democracy”.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In both case, it would be a disaster. In both case, it would speed the decline and make it deeper and messier as the inevitable failure of such a regime would leave only ruins in its wake.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The only alternative would be for the state to relinquish its claim to supremacy and share evenly the cost of the descent among all citizens by encouraging a progressive return to domestic economy and organic forms of solidarity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I don’t know why, but I don’t hold my breath.</span></div>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-39278613492395971062012-03-10T12:15:00.000-08:002012-03-10T12:15:36.234-08:00False Choices<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDr5iOLJRCwm6zcJPWLeUMRULXlK1TKf_R-tf5qr0zaptFCTXB41kf28iu4OAAqSaeKDFAPtIgQ1UN90DbBsyYnoPHBTvXDezKf9irJL0r2xrBVM0By8nXDxHlaDnBqiZ3gvLe3-cU4zc/s1600/sarkozy_la_france_flotte.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDr5iOLJRCwm6zcJPWLeUMRULXlK1TKf_R-tf5qr0zaptFCTXB41kf28iu4OAAqSaeKDFAPtIgQ1UN90DbBsyYnoPHBTvXDezKf9irJL0r2xrBVM0By8nXDxHlaDnBqiZ3gvLe3-cU4zc/s320/sarkozy_la_france_flotte.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It is
election time in France. Five weeks from now, we will elect our
president for the next five years and unless he does something really
stupid, the socialist pretender, François Hollande, will win in a
landslide – albeit not necessarily with the insane margin polls
predict. The most striking feature of this election, however, is not
the unpopularity of the incumbent president but the similarity of
their worldview.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">French
Presidents are chosen in a two-round runoff election, with the
candidates falling into four categories. First you have the two or
three contenders, who have a realistic chance of being elected.
Generally those are the candidate of the Socialist Party and whoever
dominates the moderate right at that particular moment. This time it
will be François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Then you
have the outsiders who most probably won’t make it to the second
round, but might under the right circumstances. This time, it will be
François Bayrou (center), Jean-Luc-Mélenchon (Left Front) and
Marine Le Pen (National Front).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Behind
them stand the marginal candidates : Eva Joly (Greens), Jacques
Cheminade (the local Larouchie) Nathalie Arthaud (troskyist),
Philippe Poutou (another brand of troskyism) and Dominique de
Villepin (moderate right, with a serious grudge against Sarkozy).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Finally,
there are those who will be denied ballot access because they don’t
have at least 500 signed presentations from elected officials. They
are too numerous to be listed and their programs are often
masterworks of involuntary comedy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">All of
them, however, want to restart growth.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigjt8tkOC05C2uMjjaUaZwJam2kuzH33ihj_FZ7X0CMqYVA0zQX98uqDiDVL53iscCZesGyndODGOow_9Ge6hqgwImrUsKxeG0BM1nVvEHsyKqd18F14V0EXenr2eehyuYsdbdnBmSbP8/s1600/journal87.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigjt8tkOC05C2uMjjaUaZwJam2kuzH33ihj_FZ7X0CMqYVA0zQX98uqDiDVL53iscCZesGyndODGOow_9Ge6hqgwImrUsKxeG0BM1nVvEHsyKqd18F14V0EXenr2eehyuYsdbdnBmSbP8/s320/journal87.jpg" width="246" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Of
course, there are differences, often significant ones. The Greens,
for instance, want a Green Growth, fueled by renewable energy. The
socialists want to lower nuclear share in our energy mix to a mere
50%. The National Front wants a French Growth in French Francs
(muslim people need not apply). Nicolas Sarkozy … well, Nicolas
Sarkozy badly needs some growth to be reelected, but that does not
sound likely.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The idea
that sustained growth might be a thing of the past, however, is not
something responsible people mention in a polite conversation, even
if those people happen to be green.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">There
are many reasons for that, but one of them is the way the Green
movement developed in France. Political ecology first entered French
politics during the early seventies, with the candidacy of René
Dumont at the 1974 presidential elections, two mere years after the
founding of the first ecological magazine <i>La Gueule Ouverte</i>.
Nobody talked about the climate then – it was assumed that at some
point in the future it would become colder, but that hardly mattered.
The subjects <i>du jour</i> were resource depletion, runaway
pollution, demographic explosion and of course nuclear warfare.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
Meadows report had just been published, and contrary to what is
assumed today, it triggered a huge debate within French society.
Ecological themes nearly became mainstream and in 1978 an educational
animated TV series called <i>Once Upon a Time... Man</i> was
broadcast on the third channel. A whole generation of children
watched it, notably the last episode, which described the future of
our civilization... and its demise because of pollution and resource
wars.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Yet this
concern faded during the eighties and when the Greens resurfaced as a
cultural and political force, they had gone over to standard upper
middle class environmentalism. Ironically, one of the main causes of
this devolution was the 1973 oil shock. It convinced the French
elites that dependence on foreign oil was a dangerous thing. They
quickly found a solution : nuclear.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">At the
time, it was not as stupid as it sounds now. Chernobyl was still in
the distant future and the only alternative was importing gas from
the USSR or Algeria. We still produced uranium at that time, and
there were in Africa a number of producer countries both friendly and
able to control their territory.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Besides,
everybody knows that accidents are unfrench and that our borders are
radiation-proof.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
Greens, of course, opposed this move, as well as some other
movements. It was a huge fight, but outside Brittany, they lost. Only
the Breton nuclear plants were canceled when the Socialist Party won
the elections in 1981 but the fight itself focused the Green movement
on the nuclear industry and away from sustainability.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Meanwhile,
France began to experience high unemployment during the late
seventies, the result of the first oil crisis, but also of the more
or less deliberate choice of favoring high wages and pensions over
full employment. The Keynesian policies of the first years of the
presidency of François Mitterand did not help either, and France was
stuck with an unemployment rate permanently over 8%.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">France
was, and is still, a welfare state and unemployment benefits can be
quite generous – they depend on how much you were paid before you
lost your job. They don't last for ever, however, and when they do
end, the fall can be quite brutal and people who wonder whether they
will still have a home at the end of the year tend to put environment
very low on their list of priority.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
Greens having failed to make the connection between resource
depletion and economic decline, green politics became restricted to
the left wing upper middle class – in French, we call them the
“bobos”. Of course, the upper middle class has its own demands
and concerns. It wants to keep its privileged position within the
society, but wants also to be seen as the progressive good guys. This
has resulted in a focus on societal issues and policies which look
superficially left wing but actually reinforce the status-quo, such
as free immigration (aka brain and manpower pump) or “fair trade”,
which in fact locks poor countries in their role of provider of
underpriced raw material.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
hedonistic world-view of the bobos, means that they will oppose any
policy aiming at reinforcing communities – as the Archdruid has
stated, healthy communities come to a price, a price the upper middle
class is not in a hurry to pay.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The
result has been an ideological disaster mixing tokenism and, since
the bobos have a lot to lose from a true relocalization of economy or
from a true simplification of the society, an insistence that all our
problems can be solved if we invest heavily in the right green
technologies and create a lot of green jobs for the self-appointed
green elite.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">I am
afraid those delusions won't survive their, arguably unfortunate,
collision with reality.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Curiously,
a few parts of the traditional left may be more aware of the problems
ahead.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8RaAfOWSSaatubCBvWgEQNkuXdv9vPnjBgtuD-ftQC-FyZa_99mqiWbVAQxi3kAJUII_3BerNwJrHylulBRMsXi2LC9WYqDFjWX9l4QxuQY5Q05JiMlmy2rwYdpsa0NFFpzE7VJrxfAY/s1600/Michel_Rocard_MEDEF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8RaAfOWSSaatubCBvWgEQNkuXdv9vPnjBgtuD-ftQC-FyZa_99mqiWbVAQxi3kAJUII_3BerNwJrHylulBRMsXi2LC9WYqDFjWX9l4QxuQY5Q05JiMlmy2rwYdpsa0NFFpzE7VJrxfAY/s320/Michel_Rocard_MEDEF.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Less
than a month ago, Michel Rocard published a book titled “</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>Mes
points sur les i - Propos sur la présidentielle et la crise”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">,
where he explains that growth won't returns and that the European
Union is a non-entity in international politics. For those who don't
know French politics, Michel Rocard is the closest thing to a an
elder statesman we have. During the seventies, he was the main rival
of François Mitterand within the Socialist Party and his prime
minister from 1988 to 1991. He probably spared France a colonial war
in New Caledonia, but he and his followers were progressively
marginalized in the following years and he was finally exiled to the
European Parliament.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Having
become a non-entity in French politics, he can now speak his mind and
say what other politicians cannot. That François Hollande prefaced
his book shows he is listened to, if not necessarily heeded.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Of
course, Michel Rocard speaks from within the ideology of progress. He
sees the future as a time of difficulties, not as the long descent it
will be. Unable, or unwilling, to acknowledge the limits of our
uranium supply, he advocates keeping our nuclear plants “lest we
enter degrowth”, and of course, his goal is not to accompany the
coming descent, so as to make it less brutal, but to keep the status
quo as long as possible.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">This
half-lucidity will certainly influence my vote next month, especially
when I compare it to the Greens' delusions, but it makes the
curtailed character of our political choices painfully obvious. It is
not that we cannot see the coming crisis – Michel Rocard sees it
clearly enough and the Greens, for all their delusions are somewhat
aware of it. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of us shy
away from its logical consequences, because they contradict our
ideology.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In
fact, we have, during the last decades, more or less consciously
chosen to put our faith in progress before the survival of our
civilization, and this choice has made all other political choices,
if not irrelevant – a fascistic or communist regime in France would
be an unmitigated disaster – at least without long term
consequences.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
only horizon is now collapse. The only question is how our
communities will adapt to it locally, far from the political rallies
and the golden halls of the senate.</span></span></div>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-31477456900788021892012-02-29T06:20:00.000-08:002012-02-29T06:20:01.219-08:00Imperial leftovers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqNkxEws2TqzKW8QGBLngREk7h72QNV93ewQ49vJLGrQPjLeicZSm20GpF9soysAPzZxlhiHZWSurn_oZ4Pk2qFZIfHtrqsiPZsm4Uu8KcvcXpZvIZizUAUu-bJftPFAHFKl2VSnfR_cw/s1600/Gr%C3%A8ve_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_des_Antilles_fran%C3%A7aises_de_2009_-_Gosier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqNkxEws2TqzKW8QGBLngREk7h72QNV93ewQ49vJLGrQPjLeicZSm20GpF9soysAPzZxlhiHZWSurn_oZ4Pk2qFZIfHtrqsiPZsm4Uu8KcvcXpZvIZizUAUu-bJftPFAHFKl2VSnfR_cw/s200/Gr%C3%A8ve_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_des_Antilles_fran%C3%A7aises_de_2009_-_Gosier.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You probably don’t know it, but Réunion Island has <a href="http://www.zinfos974.com/Emeutes-77-interpelles-et-9-policiers-et-gendarmes-blesses-la-nuit-derniere_a38194.html?com">been racked by riots</a> about the price of gas last week. For those of you who happen not to be specialists of African geography, Réunion Island is a French département, roughly half the size of Rhode Island, located in the Ocean Indian, not far from Madagascar. It is officially a part of France, even if, of course, Frenchmen care about it only when it affects the mainland, such as when a chikungunya epidemic threatened to spill over Southern France.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It is not the only such island. France has kept from its colonial days a collection of smallish islands of dubious economic value, the average Frenchman will never put his foot on. Some are departments, ruled from Paris, others are more or less autonomous, one is ruled by a triad of tribal kings. With the exception of New Caledonia, and of those islets without any human permanent population, all of them are utterly dependent on subsidies from the mainland for their economic survival.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At the origin, they were sugar islands or strategic havens on the roads to India or China. This made them tremendously important in the wars which opposed France and Britain for the control of maritime trade roads during the XVIIIth century. After the fall of Napoleon, the advent of industrial society and the digging of the Suez Canal, however, they quickly lost their relevance. Today, they mostly live off tourism and government subsidies, which basically amounts to the same : wealth produced far away dumped on territories without any kind of natural resources.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Their economy stunted by the legacy of slavery and early trade union with a generally far better endowed metropole, those territories never developed a viable industrial sector and cannot compete with their poorer neighbors in the agricultural domain. As a result, their economy has become parasitic.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As everything has to be imported from France, the coast of living is significantly higher than on the mainland, while salary tend to be lower, and unemployment greater, which leads to regular troubles. Thus in 2009, Guadeloupe Island was shaken by a general strike which degenerated into a near-insurection. The government reacted by lowering the price of basics and by granting even more subsidies to economies, have become embarrassingly dependent of them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Needless to say, this will only make things more difficult down the road.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Those territories are quite hospitable. A few may be drowned by sea level rise, but most are volcanic in nature, with a rather rugged relief and a fertile soil. They were inhabited before the beginning of the industrial age, and it is likely they will still be relatively densely populated when it will be a mere memory.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On the short term, however, things look far less rosy. In an ideal world, our overseas territories should prepare for independence, export their surplus population to the metropole, disengage from globalization, tourism and cash crops focused agriculture to adopt a relocalized way of life.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As everybody has probably noticed, however, we are not in an ideal world. Even in those territories with a native population, there is no clear majority for independence. It is not difficult to see why. The French overseas departments have allowed themselves to be trapped in a vicious spiral of dependency. The same could be said, by the way, for Netherlands Antilles, which were supposed to transition toward independent after WWII, but never did so, and have been recently dissolved, its constituent parts becoming either "countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands" or mere dutch municipalities ruled from the Hague.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">An independent Republic of Guadeloupe or Réunion, would have to support a French style state apparatus with a third world economy based upon tourism and vanilla or banana growing. This is clearly impossible and locals are understandably in no hurry to try. In fact, another Indian Ocean island, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayotte">Mayotte</a>, recently voted to become a full French department, which will enable its inhabitants to benefit from the RSA (the French guaranteed minimal income, roughly 500 $).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The problem, of course, is that, with the age of cheap and abundant energy, France, and presumably The Netherlands and Britain as well, will be less and less able to afford those imperial leftovers at the other side of the world. At some point of the future, they will have to get rid of them, and violence is very likely to be a part of the equation.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">French overseas territories are very dependent on oil. Unlike in France proper, most of their electricity is produced by diesel generators. As I have said, nearly everything has to be imported and the tourism sector is highly dependent on the continued availability of a reasonably cheap air transport.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As energy becomes increasingly rare and expensive, the cost of living in the French overseas territories will rise accordingly, while non-state-related revenues will plummet. This will lead to another round of civil unrest, like in Guadeloupe in 2009, in Mayotte in 2011 or in Réunion Island last week. The state will react the way it always does, raising wages, granting subsidies and sending a few rioters to jail. Local economies will be made yet more dependent.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At some point, something nasty is bound to happen, especially in those islands where social hierarchy is still partially based upon skin color. Old simmering feuds dating back from the colonization or from the age of slavery will resurface and being a member of a local minority will probably become very unhealthy. Please note, by the way, that "member of a local minority” does not necessarily means "white". The population of the former sugar islands is often quite mixed, with substantial Indian and Chinese minorities and New Caledonia (arguably a special case) harbors a strong Polynesian (mostly Wallisian) minority, which could be in an awkward situation should the conflict between Kanaks (Melanesian aborigines – roughly 40% of the population) and Caldoches (descendants of French settlers and convicts – roughly 30% of the population) erupt again.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">New Caledonia and Polynesia are likely to break away, turning their anger toward France, which is probably the healthy thing to do. Since they have native populations with a reasonably functional culture and some people remembering how one can survive on a small island in the middle of nowhere, they are likely to reach the far side of the Hubert curve in a reasonably good shape. Places like the Marquesas Islands, may even fare better than before the colonization.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The other territories will cling to France like a castaway to his plank... and will be abandoned, either formally, or more probably informally. Like all European countries France will be forced to concentrate the resources it will be left on its core territory, which will increasingly mean Paris and the big provincial cities – this process has already begun, by the way. The administration will grow thin on the ground and local authorities will have to take over, probably in a disorderly fashion since they definitely don’t want to take over, and establish trade and cooperation networks with their neighbors rather than with far away Paris.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There have been a lot of precedents in history, and, to tell the truth, the outcome has not always been good. Sub-Roman Britain fell into warlordism when the Roman left but the Norse colonies in Greenland and the Polynesian settlements in Henderson and Pictairn islands died out, leaving only grassy ruins behind them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I do hope that such a fate shall not befall our last colonies, as I do hope that the people who will build a sustainable civilization there centuries from now will be the descendant and the cultural successors of those who inhabit them now – they deserve better than the perpetual dependency in which we have entrapped them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It will nevertheless be a long way down. </span>Damien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.com8