You have to love this kid

 

You thought I was kidding about the Coca Cola

Didn’t you…

Living in the End Times

I know what you’re thinking: one too many evenings listening to aid worker’s or soldier’s  or environmentalist’s dirges about the horror…the horror (whispered in a marlon brando voice), and he’s gone over the edge. Nick’s been overwhelmed and staggered off into Jesusland. But no, I have not come to that sorry pass, yet.

This is much worse.  Living in the End Times is not a book hot of the presses in some Christian university madhouse in Florida. It is a startling new book by Slovenian Marxist philosopher and critical theorist Slavoj Žižek, who teaches at so many universities in so many countries he must live out of a suitcase.

I reproduce here the clip from his publisher, Verso:

‘Zizek analyzes the end of the world at the hands of the “four riders of the apocalypse.”’

There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Zizek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But, he asks, if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times? In a major new analysis of our global situation, Slavok Zizek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal.

After passing through this zero-point, we can begin to perceive the crisis as a chance for a new beginning. Or, as Mao Zedong put it, “There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.” Slavoj Zizek shows the cultural and political forms of these stages of ideological avoidance and political protest, from New Age obscurantism to violent religious fundamentalism. Concluding with a compelling argument for the return of a Marxian critique of political economy, Zizek also divines the wellsprings of a potentially communist culture—from literary utopias like Kafka’s community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.”

We’ve come full political circle. When the Marxists are singing from the same hymn sheet as the Christians you know everyone is spooked. There’s a growing consensus among people who think beyond the next commercial break in X Factor that we’re not in a recession or a depression. We’re at something altogether different and given our species’ history of dealing with radical change, it’s reasonable to assume things will get bloody before they get better.  Which comes about a decade late, but welcome to the party.

What’s worrying me more than the imminent collapse of our economy is that there is now a new kind of Super Duper Capitalist version gathering steam. I’m not sure, but it looks like the people who made a pile because of the inability of our economy to deal attractively with zero margin/scalable businesses, mostly internet, like Bill Gates, Meg Whitman et al, are now convinced that because they are geniuses (after all they must be) they should run the world. I was at a TEDX conference recently at London’s Science Museum, in which Mrs G, Melinda, told us over satellite link from New York that her model for defeating poverty worldwide was Coca Cola Inc.  Said without a trace of irony. Coca Cola? Are you pulling my nipple ring? A company with a  human rights record that makes the Chinese Communist Party look like your favourite auntie? Take a peek at Killercoke.org and tell me this is the model of our new Hyperdrive Capitalism – and I’ll believe you.

I’ve always given Polybius’ Anacyclosis some credence, but according to this new model we go from Oligarchy to Democracy and instead of going into Ochlocracy, we go into Oligarchy II. Given the tremendous gini coefficient numbers, maybe we’ll have a kind of combined super elite, bio enhanced oligarchy living in heavily guarded enclaves, with Mob rule on the outside. Oh, that’s London now. Silly me.

For real dark side entertainment, catch Slavoj Žižek on YouTube. Killer.

Oh, I found Living in the End Times on YT.

Climate Gate and the new Porsche

I was at the Frontline Club last night for an event called Climate Change: The Forgotten Crisis. I didn’t know we’d forgotten about it, so it came as a shock. I spend most of my time, when I’m not sleeping, thinking about it, so I must be a fanatic. The point is that after the so called “Climate Gate” business, climate’s been pushed to the back burner. Everyone’s fed up with the scientists and the question is: what are the challenges facing journalists and scientists in covering the issues? Or how can we make this interesting again without sounding stupid? Great panel with Richard Black, the BBC News Website environment correspondent, Julian Rush, the science correspondent for Channel 4 news and James Randerson for the Guardian.

Representing the Global Campaign for Climate Action, we had Kelly Rigg, who was fantastic. Yes, I’m a vile cynic and I not so secretly think we’ve passed half a dozen tipping points which will unavoidably make our species’ adaptation to a new climate iffy at best. But it’s people like Kelly that might pull us back from the brink. Of course we are about to blow past 400ppm like Valentino Rossi on a new Ducati, and the only way to stop that would be to stop the world economy for a while. And there aren’t too many journalists whose bosses would let them suggest that. Mind you, on current evidence it’s looking like a distinct possibility.

What saddened me was the feeling that we all knew this stuff. All the panel knew it. All the audience, many of whom were either journalists or activists, knew that while the science was fine, the forces ranged against a grown up discussion about the climate were vast, rich and winning. The unavoidable problem is that big chunks of the population are largely indifferent or they simply don’t believe it. There’s a feeling it’s all a bit of a bore and people are sick and tired of  being terrified. They’re already terrified about the economy without a bunch of campaigners telling them they’re evil for having a car and they have to dig up the garden and grow vegetables. Add in the people who think baby Jesus is coming back to save us, so it would be impolite to do anything, and you see the problem. There’s not enough of us to win. But we had fun.

For you up to the minute people out there, James Hansen and Makiko Sato have a new website which is updating data as it comes in. Hansen has been right for so long, and ahead of the curve for so long, he’d be bored if he wasn’t so dedicated.

So that’s it for the resource depletion/climate catastrophe trajectory, but what about the singularity/exponential innovation trajectory? It’s been a banner period since I got back from the Atlantic.

First, at last, a hybrid that doesn’t look like a re-engineered can of beans. I’ve never understood why hybrids had to be the ugliest cars ever designed. Thank you Mr. Porsche. They call it Intelligent Performance. Now some of you know I’ve been ranting about how we couldn’t let the christian mad have the phrase “Intelligent Design”, because we were going to have to use it, you know, to save the world and stuff. Well here it is…

Finally a hybrid that rich people won’t feel silly or pretentious driving. Because if the rich don’t like it, it isn’t going to happen.

Second, Craig Venter is now the most important biologist since Darwin. Artificial life is here. Every science fiction fan in the world is thrilled. All the religious are having the usual “are you playing dog” nervous breakdown. Evolution just took a left turn.

Third, my personal favourite of the week, a robot priest marries a couple in Japan.

If that doesn’t tell you the future’s arrived nothing will.

I’ve been continuing my reading on the humanitarian crisis, or rather the crisis in humanitarianism, and I’m wondering how this all plays into the scenarios above.  I’m reading (for the second time, the first time was so depressing I had to take a break) The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by former World Bank economist William Easterly, as well as Conor Foley’s The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War and Linda Polman’s War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times. The gist here is that we spent $2.3 trillion since the end of WW2, did no good, did a lot of harm, enriched numbers of dictators beyond their considerable dreams of avarice,  got them nice places on the French Riviera and Malibu, perverted international law, and turned the whole thing into a questionable arm of western corporate/military hegemony. Hard to see why we don’t just quit.

Add to this Johann Hari’s rant in the Independent about the nasty connections between major environmental groups and nasty corporations, that are in fact killing the planet while lying about it, and now you know why I’m going to take my secretary for a week’s sailing in Turkey.

I try to be as cynical as humanly possible, and it’s still not enough to keep up with reality.