Political Reality
 Aleksandar Malečić |
Politicians will never stand up against the hand that feeds them. Even if they do, they won't be politicians anymore. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
Can the control of global population size in any shape or form become a political reality or not? If not, why not? |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
I don't know about you, but we in Serbia have very negative experiences with politicians. Even worse, the environment (both natural and societal) is increasingly complex with bigger and faster changes. Only a genius could deal with them. No, even a genius can't deal with ever-changing circumstances and there should be another genius willing to continue. Hierarchy and politics as usual develops the worst characteristics in (already average and terrifyingly powerful) people and it will do so even more. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
An elected politician is a node within the network for the next few years. People can often tolerate and swallow his/her stupidity and sometimes even illegal activities and war crimes for the sake of stability. In democracy it's "better" to vote for someone you don't like than let someone you despise to win. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
There is something wild and dangerous in the air. Each time a summit of global business or politics is organized, one can feel a sense of change and disorder. Official documents after these conferences look more like a speech by the next Miss World (we should end poverty, wars, injustice and inequality) than clear visions. Business and politics as usual are counting their last days. Just think about how things looked like to you five years ago and how they look now. Were politicians and business people more capable to plan future events than, let's say, astrologists? Will their clearness of vision increase or decrease? The dynamics of changes will definitely increase. The situation is the leader and the moment and not people and their documents and summits. Can you imagine a politician/company owner speaking to his colleague: "Oh man! We are having some hard time to reach those goals from Davos."? I can't. Those documents will be forgotten five years from now, just like those written five (or even two because everything is becoming faster and more intense) years ago. When you live in former Yugoslavia (Serbia in my case), every child understands that "political realities" or more important than any document and declaration. Political realities divide nations in good and bad guys, in those who have human rights and those who are not humans at all. As long as you are on the "good side", there is no such thing as terrible decision/war crime/wrong strategy. Documents and declarations will come and go. As times become increasingly complicated, news reports and articles and analyses will be losing their predictive power. More or less they have never had that power, but now it's more visible. Is that impending chaos and unpredictability good? It isn't, but it won't change if we close our eyes. It seems to me that atheists are more prone to think that "it's not fair" to live in this messy times. If nature is indifferent about our existence as living and conscious beings, it will be even more indifferent about our belief in "eternal economic growth". GDP and politics are our creations. They are based on our selfish instincts and ignorance of our instincts to be nice to each other. We live in a house with four walls and one tiny window through which we see "reality". As things become more complicated and unpredictable, we shall either make all walls transparent or make that window even smaller. What will happen five or even ten years from now? I don't know. I just know that it will be big. Everyone will be surprised. If you understand that many things (globalization, resources, economy...) will one way or another turn upside down, I guess it's not such a surprise anymore. It's not the first time that people think that something enormous (socialist revolution, nuclear war, end of the world...) will happen, but this is the real deal. When people put a name of a "developed" country and the word "bankruptcy" in the same sentence, something is indeed going on. Declarations and official documents can only be used instead of sleeping pills. Their predictive power is very modest. There is a good book Eaarth by Bill McKibben. You may disagree with its conclusions and projections (I don't), but we indeed live on a planet different from the one we used to live (with an extra "a" in its name). Many things are new and different than before: economy, politics, dilemmas. Only our perceptions are old (globalization and more "just" economic growth across the world as the cure for all diseases). |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
There is a good book "Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness" by Richard Thaller and Cass Sunstein. I especially like the part about default options. Humans are not completely rational beings, independent in their decision making. If you are a voter, you will probably vote either for your standard political option (each time for the same party) or for a politician who looks and sounds smart and serious. Also, politicians are preselected and your choice is reduced to a few people. The process of pre-selection is made by other politicians (the one who is the most spineless are doesn't think too much can sometimes be a pretty good choice) and, let's say it, rich people and companies. Your choice is reduced to a small number of people. You will vote for a "patriot", a smart-looking man or the least terrible option. If your nation is saturated by history and if you are sick and tired of big events, the chances for you to be satisfied with the voting process are very slim. So, we have an elected politician, a person chosen out of many in a very doubtful process. What is he (politicians are usually male - another way of pre-selection) supposed to do? He should lead your nation. Where? What is the goal? He has inherited a "political reality", a set of default options. This political option is not an effect of rational decisions and later improvements. It's more like strata of mud accumulated over the years. All those childhood frustrations from previous politicians, historical events and friends and foes are layered over each other. It's all there - industrialisation, globalization, business, old conflicts and sets of values and habits forming and unquestionable tower. It's a deity that even atheists believe in. It's a mechanism. In order to keep that mechanism working properly and without too many interruptions, people tend to embed in it some vicious feedback loops. It is preferred to tolerate bad decisions, corruption and even war crimes made by our beloved politicians. It's a bad thing to question the political reality especially when our nation is under attack/in crisis. Spineless people are generally better suited for politics and now our patriotic duty is to tolerate their spineless behaviour. The whole situation doesn't look very promising if the status quo must be changed because of new circumstances (debt crisis, peak oil, devastated environment and climate change to name a few). Even if a politician still has some of his integrity left, it's warmer to stay in the herd. We should think about it the next time we say that politicians are frustratingly bad people. The mechanism and the accumulated rust are bad. This kind of people and mechanism are being globalized. If you are economically rich (unsustainable), you are supposed to spread your lifestyle, know-how, wisdom and peace-making capability across the world. It used to "work" this way all these years. We are not prepared for this whole paradigm hitting the wall of natural and economic limits. The biggest challenges ever are right there in front of us. We should be brilliant and governed by geniuses. Political decisions should be equivalents of scientific discoveries and radical innovations. There is not a single person capable to lead this kind of process for years. But, we have each other. Could our interactions be complex and adaptive enough to deal with complexity? Is there a way to redefine the default options, the holy cows of our modern and increasingly globalized lifestyle? It's not about our children and grandchildren - this generation will choose what to do. Not changing anything is also a choice. You will somehow react to this comment. I'll never be able to perceive that reaction or possible echoes now or any time in the future. I don't need to understand. I am just an ant in an ant colony. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
When I was a child, I thought that politicians are the richest people in their countries. I mean, they are the greatest and most important sons and daughters of their nations. This is not far from truth. Politicians live in luxury. They are greeted with music each time they visit a foreign country. Their visits to other countries are historical events and it’s not really important whether it will bring results or not. Do you have a feeling in your country are liars? The situation isn’t much different in other countries. When people start thinking in abstract terms such as “better life”, “patriotism” or “vision”, it’s easy for both politicians and their voters to slip into confusion. We are the generation with the most complex challenges ever. The whole concept of living in civilization will break over our back. We don’t need confused voters and politicians. As the challenges start increasing in their complexity, people who really understand the situation will hesitate to be involved. Take for example Bill Clinton, a former president of America. He has said about the book Plan B (also available on the Web as a free PDF document, World on the Edge in newer editions): “Lester Brown tells us how to build a more just world and save the planet… in a practical, straightforward way. We should all heed his advice.” Did he heed Lester Brown’s advice when he was a president? Has he recommended the book to his wife? Would you expect any politician to say: “Hey, this book is amazing? I should follow everything written there, step by step.”? It’s not going to happen. Are politicians guilty? Well, they probably don’t try to do everything they could, but they are far from the only cause of complications. In not so distant past we were not really aware of all complications waiting for us in the future. We’ve heard stories about destruction of the environment and holes in the ozone layer. We thought that our offspring might be in trouble. As the years are passing by, it seems that it isn’t about are children and grandchildren – it’s about us. The paradigm of eternal growth is stronger than ever. Just look at those Chinese people and their economy blooming. They are buying new cars for each member of their families. Are we supposed to passively observe them taking over the world? No way! Sorry, Mister Brown, your book is very interesting and informative, but it seems we shall not heed your advice. Kill or be killed. Politics and business as usual won’t spontaneously change their course. Economic strength means that you can attack other countries and bring them democracy and salvation and they can’t attack you and bring democracy and salvation to your country. The idea of eternal economic growth and global competition are new. The results of this idea are becoming increasingly visible. They definitely aren’t obvious, since people with natural resources and people with money often live geographically far from each other. Rain forests or sea fish aren’t in your backyard, so it’s complicated to see links between causes and consequences. As the problems increase, stupid, ignorant and spineless people will flood the global political scene. Are you a cultural creative? The idea of cultural creatives is in my opinion some kind of narcissism. It’s a perception of two groups of people: those who are ignorant on one side and those who think much about sustainability and don’t do much after the thinking on the other. Cultural creatives are supposed to be awesome. Bill Clinton says that we should heed Lester Brown’s advice. Does this make him a cultural creative? He would definitely qualify as such in any questionnaire. Is his wife a cultural creative? Do they differ from your family? Are you sure? Does Lester Brown heed his advice or is he just “the best pupil of the generation” who writes nice books? I mean, Matt Damon supports his vision. How cool is that? |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
There is something with politics and actors. I've heard about two porno actresses reaching very high in politics. For some reason it's very easy for an actor to become a successful politician. With our short attention span, we might think that it has always been this way. With a possibility to oversimplify things, let's look for a similar profession in history to actors becoming politicians. It's a jester or "king's fool". Which quality do actors have in order to usually be very successful politicians? First of all, they are good orators. But, if we consider that many of them are action heroes, it seems there is something more than their skills in public speaking. There is something People identify actors with their roles, so they may be exciting or sexy for voters. Will politics of the future be all about speeches and being exciting and sexy? Everything around us will change drastically in a single lifetime. We are about to the biggest changes ever in history of this planet. Someone could say that this is an exaggeration and there's nothing special about our generation. Is that so? We are ancestors capable to kill every multicellular being on this planet? How about water, natural resources or overpopulation? The danger for a national economy to cause complications across the world isn't really ancient. We heavily rely on oil (energy, raw materials) and other fossil fuels. Technology and infrastructure don't only make our lives easier and more entertaining. They are extensions of our bodies and brains. But, they obey the rules of thermodynamics and entropy that differ from living organisms. You can self-repair (regenerate) and think creatively, but your infrastructure and technology can't. The idea of eternal growth of population and economy is old only a few decades, just like the idea of action heroes and sex symbols being good politicians. Both of these ideas have the same origin in the paradigm of free market and industrialization taking care about themselves. Modern economic presumes that this planet is big (which it is) and that it actually means that the current situation can be tolerated forever. If we make an analogy between society and human body, then modern politicians may be a hat. It can work under very specific circumstances. These circumstances will seize to exist very soon. Peak oil or any similarly intense crisis (out of many candidates) could appear any time and people will still be voting for action figures or family members of former politicians. It doesn’t seem very wise to elect people who will step aside and let corporations to do their business and globalization as usual. They do create laws and take care about stability of society. But, everything they do can be calculated in monetary terms. Your health complications or broken leg are bad for economy. The media create politicians (it brings us back to action and porno actors) more than their human qualities and visions. It wasn’t always the case. People had different ideas through history. There were times when only aristocracy or people born in towns had the right to go to school or be politically active. We might think that our perceptions of the world will last forever. It wasn’t long time ago when those who claimed that the Earth is round risked their lives. Nothing lasts forever. Our generation will reach the climax. Our lifetime will be some kind of a conclusion of all previous ideas of living in organized societies. Money makers have always been more “valuable” than food producers. Anything necessary must be cheap in order to be available to as many people as possible. Expensive yachts could hardly cause chaos and failed states, but problems with water and food could. Our generation is really special. The entire history, all those wars for opium and spices, all those exterminated “savage” tribes and ideologies have brought us here. Our generation, facing with disappearing animal species, climate change, problems with natural resources and the idea that we need more of it, is the final point of a long experiment with very unpredictable outcomes. Though, even if some of the outcomes are predictable, we might ignore them because we don’t like them. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
Our modern world is being governed by white supremacy. Hitler's racism was obvious. Racism and closed-mindedness may be even more dangerous when no one perceives them as such. Osama Bin Laden is dead. Who was he? We might agree or disagree with his ideology. Killing civilians is awful, but sometimes a side in conflict might perceive people who allow the system work (Radio Television Serbia in 1999, World Trade Center in 2001) as non-civilians. Bin Laden and the people around him perceived America as a modern empire arrogant enough to attack sovereign countries all around the world. When the only option left is to kill other people, then something went terribly wrong in communication. I suppose that children who say: "I am going to kill other people when I grow up" are rare. Many boys do dream about being brave and protecting the town/nation, but politicians are those who pick sides. It’s absurd that democracy is adjusted to individuals well adapted to the past and all kinds of patriotisms and national prides. If you are capable to think outside the box, you will also be outside politics. So, political campaigns are for very average and spineless (good with everyone) intellectuals. Those very average people are forced by their voters to make decisions about some complex issues. For me it’s not hard to imagine that, even if a politician was on a good side, he/she, being a very average and spineless person, could do or say something wrong and increase already existing animosities and misunderstandings. It really isn’t a big stretch of imagination. Politics and conflicts as usual belong to the world of well-defined hierarchies. If you want to convict a politician from the top for corruption or war crimes, you should better think twice. It’s a closed loop of politicians being forced to control the situation way beyond their intellectual and emotional capability of understanding on one hand and a complicated procedure to blame them for consequences. Just try to succeed in politics by speaking about the limits of growth. Does the modern world still obey the rules of well-defined hierarchies? Just think about the hypothesis of six degrees of separation (and increasingly tight links) between you and any person on this planet. If conflicts are about a lack of good communication, do politics and conflicts as usual still make sense under the circumstances of more efficient communication and networking? Habits and frustrations from the past (in case of politicians, probably including traumas from childhood) play an important role in inertia, just like people’s hesitation to experience something new and unknown. Nations still daddies who will think and act instead of them. The problem is that elected “daddies” don’t have much of individuality and integrity. Why do Americans with Russians trying to follow them rule the world? They won Germans a lifetime ago. Modern Germans don’t feel much defeated, do they? Also, when you have the European origin and the whole world follows your calendar, alphabet, lifestyle, art and popular culture and (in case of the English-speaking nations) language, it’s hard not to feel superior. Also, Americans, Russians and their friends are obvious targets for those who look for their place under the Sun, especially with the stereotype of Muslims and Serbs being terrorists in action films. I don’t know any Serbian terrorists besides of Gavrilo Princip who has started World War 1 and irreversibly brought Serbs into the spotlight of global politics and conflicts. We are supposed to build a global sustainable society on that pile of mud. We need to communicate, communicate and, when we fail, communicate even more. Glorification of violent death of another person (including Osama Bin Laden) can hardly make the world more just and sustainable. Call me politically incorrect if you wish, but this is how stuff works. Our hatred and love toward some people don’t have much to do with reality. I mean reality with real causes and effects and not some imaginary political reality. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
That war against terrorism has provoked me to add one more comment about it. Someone might say that it doesn’t have anything with sustainability, but, since it’s about the way people communicate nowadays, I disagree. I am a Serb and, while looking for origins of hatred between people, it’s natural for me to look in my area. We have here four nations: Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins. Adding Macedonians (sharing history with Serbs and Bulgarians) to this group would be too complicated and they didn’t participate in the recent conflicts between Slavs, so it’s not necessary. The point is that these four nations speak the same language. Serbs and Montenegrins are Orthodox Christians, Croats are Catholics and Bosniaks (a relatively new name, previously known simply as Muslims) are Muslims. I suppose it’s a similar situation between Germans and Austrians – nations forming as empires rise and fall. In Yugoslavia some people, including my family, believed in brotherhood between these nations who are actually one nation separated by some abstract historical events and kings. Some terrifying war crimes happened during World War 2, but they didn’t destroy the belief among some people in love and brotherhood. As Yugoslavia was fragmenting, some animosities from the past showed their ugly face one more time. The politicians, average and spineless as they were, did nothing to prevent hatred and violence. This brings us back to war against terrorism. What do politicians do to prevent hatred and violence? They celebrate killing and torture of their enemies. Especially in a heavily interconnected world, links between causes and effects are very fuzzy. Even if you are the nicest person in the world, a single misstep or improper sentence/gesture can bring some terrifying results. In case of those four nations, three assassinations (it’s more with Serbs killing Serbian national leaders) were more than enough to cause really bad results. It’s absurd that sometimes you are forced to have an opinion about someone else’s stupidity and immaturity and vote for those who are, in your opinion, a less tragic option. The best way to prevent terrorist is to stop provoking them. Maybe terrorists really are inferior people that deserve all the hatred of this world, I don’t know. In order to prevent an aggressive person against you, your hatred and celebrated violence can hardly do anything good. While dealing with communications and signals, signal-to-noise ratio is very important to engineers. Perhaps, when noise is enormous, it’s better to call it noise-to-signal ratio. Will killing of enemies and trying to be rich and dangerous really be the most important political activity of this decade? Do politicians and the media, when they still feel blood of their enemies, tend to forget some important issues? Is it even politically correct to write comments like this one? We are an animal species just like any other. Even worse, we believe that we are more intelligent and wiser, but our behaviour and results don’t make this wisdom obvious. Nature existed in same form before any political reality. It has its own rules that don’t always follow our current value systems. Shall we focus on all kinds of aggressive patriotisms or on limited natural resources and very unpredictable change? I suppose there was politics in ancient political in ancient Pompei. Perhaps they even had their larger than life political conflicts. When they were under ash from the volcano, their egos and politics meant nothing. Nature has its rules and processes. We might not like some of them (such as the fact there is a limited number of people that can live on this planet), but our wishful thinking won’t erase them. Turn of the TV and think for a moment independently of anyone (including me and this comment). In order to deal with complexity, we must be brilliant, but we aren’t. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
I used to be an atheist. I seemed logical to me even when I was a child that there isn’t any bearded old man walking on clouds. God and Santa Claus didn’t make sense even when I was very young. Just imagine: an old man (or something like a man) knowing if you are a good person and able to intervene all around the world (Telekinesis?) all around the world at the same time. It seemed to me from the beginning that only really stupid people can believe in God. I don’t know what can atheists (even those who aggressively ignore religious people as idiots) expect in afterlife, but I totally understand them. Still, as I was growing up, some loopholes were appearing in my worldview. Some of them are uncertainty of future events (my first prayers when I was about 20 years old), origin of life and consciousness, ethics and teleology. I am somewhere in between a religious and non-religious person. My belief system changes all the time. The more you know, the bigger is a gap between your knowledge and what you still might learn and figure out. I used to be a communist. My parents were communists and even my grandparents (three out of four) supported communism. Well, not totally, since all of them were against the oppressive component of the system. Still, I was really surprised when both communist and Yugoslavia started disappearing in front of my eyes. It seemed that all people were waiting to get rid of those two lies and waiting for their national leaders to lead them to – something. Were communism, Yugoslavia and Josip Broz-Tito really just big lies that no one believed in except me and my family? I used to be an anti-socialist. Socialism in Serbia transformed into nationalism during 1990s. Some people are still not aware of this transformation and don’t perceive themselves as nationalists (or they tend to convince themselves that they have been nationalists all the time). I was very much against Slobodan Milosevic and the way he was manipulating people’s emotions. I perceived him as a monster that had started all kinds of conflicts and danger for his own nation and then promoted himself as a patriot. It’s unbelievably easy to use people’s fears and to say a few impropriate words in order to start a war. I really hated that man. I was convinced that everything opposite to him is good. I really thought that the world is divided in black and white, in good and bad. Since Milosevic was against private property and capitalism (excluding his inner circle), capitalism and free market looked to me like the most amazing thing that has ever happened. Later I figured out that privatization maybe isn’t the universal cure for all societal diseases and challenges. I used to believe that parents should have as many children as they want and are capable to take care of. Just imagine – giving birth to a child that is supposed to live for the next seven decades (average). Is an average parent aware of everything that will happen during that period? How many of them think for example about peak oil? Some possible scenarios of climate change look really ugly. When I say ugly, I mean UGLY. Shall we shape future events or let future events shape us? Politicians are capable of doing some really nasty things even in relatively stable times. Now, imagine them, spineless and average as they usually are, dealing with something more complex than a usual patriotism of yours. The entire idea of living in an organized society will be redefined. Does it make sense to be involved in a conflict against other people if your opinion changes so often? I ask questions all the time and sometimes I disagree even with myself. Being “uncertain” as I am, I don’t have a right to fight for my opinion. Still, the situation with consumerism, global competition and limited resources (to name a few of modern challenges) seems to me urgent. Limited as I am, now I prefer my rational understanding to my emotions, habits, wishful thinking, impulses and sense for patriotism. I don’t believe in political reality. I believe in societal complexity and physical reality. I can only hope that I shall do the right thing at the right moment. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
The whole concept of rich people knowing what should be done is melting in front of our eyes. We have lived in a reverse economy for centuries, even millennia. Prostitution is the oldest profession. Bill Clinton visited Montenegro these years as the former president of the economically strongest country. At the end of his speech, he said he was glad to be in Macedonia. Not so long time ago, NATO attacked Serbia and Montenegro. I have my opinion about Milosevic and his politics, but it would be really bad if Mr. Clinton actually wanted to bomb Macedonia. What is my message behind the words I have just written? Political reality is a very ugly beast. It’ a non-living entity that somehow rules people’s lives – politicians included. When a new politician enters an office, he inherits all that filth being accumulated for years. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. I mean, whoever is behind conspiracies that make friends to enemies and back to friends is really stupid. There is no one in charge who really cares about long-term strategy. Peak oil and resources crises will be sudden and it would be nice if there was any strategy (even conspiracy), but there isn’t. Powerful and dangerous countries attack other sovereign countries in order to “solve” conflicts that have been lasting for decades. Do you think there is any superior knowledge behind sending troops to other countries? There isn’t. It’s really ugly to watch political debates about “political reality” in Serbia that last for years and remember those “peacemakers” that have picked sides without actually understanding anything. In business and politics as usual sometimes is more than enough to be born in an economically strong country. It doesn’t really matter that your decision making (if there was any decision making) lasted for a few seconds. Now, let’s imagine the same politician who doesn’t understand anything (and even must hide this fact) to deal something as abstract as the biggest social tectonic movement ever. An average politician of yours should be a genius devoting his/her to the noble cause of sustainability. Will Mr. Clinton, his wife or anyone else all of the sudden start heeding Lester Brown’s advice? It won’t happen. Political reality is a mechanism that doesn’t allow too many degrees of freedom, even in democracy. So, where is the catch? Innovators should behave differently. No matter how hard you try, you will never be more valuable than that guy that has produced food that you will eat for lunch. Monetary value is a number that doesn’t equal with the real value. That’s the reason why we have taxes, to artificially prevent the reverse economy from falling apart. Fiscal policy can try to protect the balance, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. The new industrial revolution doesn’t need new aristocracy. It needs stronger communities. It sounds like communism, but the environment is indifferent about our political opinions. No matter how much political ideology, concrete and asphalt you use, you will never hide the fact that you are an animal living in nature that obeys its own rules, such as the second law of thermodynamics. Call me stupid, but I think that any competition is aggressive at its core. You can’t be aggressive all the time and expect beautiful results in the long run. It won’t happen. You can steamroll your competitors (such as communists) now and then, but it doesn’t make it the best approach in the world of ideas. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
Politics as we know it generally follows business. What makes some business activities more profitable than others? Does profit equal value? If this was the case, the value of organized crime would be huge. Some human activities are legal, but they could still cause more damage. The problem is that this damage isn’t always obvious. What really makes a business activity profitable is its uniqueness. As long as you are the only one making a product or service that people are convinced to desperately need you will make a lot of money. Our ancestors have been eating food, drinking water and breathing air for millions of years. Making food, water and air probably isn’t very profitable, but it still has a lot of value. As we usually don’t see direct links between causes and effects and our attention span is painfully short, we tend to relatively slowly off the sustainable path. No fiscal policy can fight this fact. We need some kind of collective awareness in order to nudge each other back to sustainability. We also need brilliant politicians. As long as a politician’s “patriotic duty” is to be ignorant, aggressive and willing to attack a sovereign country (“political reality” can bypass any law and rule), we shall be collectively moving into a disaster. We need really strong communities of practice and communities in general. You are brainwashed just like me. We both think that our habits are the only way to think and behave. You can’t even compare a natural resources crisis and climate change in its full force (combined with overpopulation) to any financial crisis. I’ve heard a lot of times that people equal a negative population growth with dying out. They know nothing about dying out. Dying out is when people don’t have food, water and air and when lethal diseases spread across a devastated environment. Each male human can theoretically make billions of children. An unborn child has nothing to do with dying out. If the transition to sustainability is still possible, we must question the whole concept of civilization. At the beginning of organized society slaves were producing food. If you wanted to be rich, you either needed to have rich parents, to be aggressive or to do something original. There is a difference between being original and the value of your work. I don’t know if this kind of transition is possible, especially because it can hardly be put into any numbers and statistics. We like numbers. We need a wise herd capable to understand that there is a life behind numbers. The media can’t cover all of the relevant information. They are filters. Even in “free societies” the idea of eternal unhappiness that can only be healed by eternal growth seems to be unquestionable. Our offspring (those who survive the mess) will look at the same phenomena as we do, but they will see them differently. You are brainwashed, just like me. We are an animal species like any other capable to perceive information needed for survival. But, the circumstances will drastically change in a single lifetime. You can at one moment understand only a small portion of reality. An engineer designing a machine can’t think about every part at the same time. He/she must change the focus vertically and horizontally. The world is more complicated than any machine. We must create some kind of collective wisdom. Maybe we can’t do it (since this is the first time ever to try to make such a thing), but we still must. As long as we hesitate, this need will be bigger and more urgent and complicated. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
There is a “nice” (both informative and disturbing) book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph Tainter. It is about looking for a pattern of failed societies. Once a society has reached a certain level of complexity, it can’t change its direction. It doesn’t mean that the people don’t want to do it – they just can’t. Let’s take for example the modern economy. It seemingly must move only upwards. The only way known in physics (more precisely thermodynamics) to become more ordered and complex is to be an open system. Living beings take low entropy from the Sun (directly or through the food chain) and as such they are capable to create something more complex from the incoming matter (or goods and services). An open system is a part of a larger whole. As the economy becomes globalized, it tends to take over the whole world and as such it can hardly be a subsystem of anything. It can become too big to fail. Perhaps someone could misunderstand this term – it means that it mustn’t fail, not that it cannot fail (actually, it can fail easily). Are we about to reach the critical level of complexity? National awareness is a relatively new phenomenon. Old conflicts remain written and recorded in the collective consciousness. Instead of informing people, the media gather people in herds around issues that at the moment look relevant. It’s not (at least not always) some kind of conspiracy. It’s more like collective stupidity, a collective entity of people nudging each other into a wrong direction. We are being governed by misused national pride, the idea of eternal growth on a limited planet and other symptoms of herd mentality. Economic and technical tools can indeed make life easier. At least it’s the way these things work at the beginning. When a certain level of complexity has been reached, things become very, well, complex. We need then economic and technical tools just to have a system that works properly. Not only that – people also tend to look for additional and more complex tools just to prevent the system from falling apart. There is somewhere ahead a point where a collapse is the only way to move forward. Is there a trick to prevent the collapse or at least to make it easier? We need stronger communities. We can hardly assess the strength of a community through numbers (though sometimes there is a correlation between strong and interconnected communities and profit making). No tax will ever be efficient enough to protect the environment and natural resources. We need a network (meshwork) like this one (or something very, very similar) in order to still have necessary communication and interactivity under complicated circumstances. We must improvise. Recommended reading: “I and Thou” by Martin Buber, “Eaarth” by Bill McKibben, “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph Tainter |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
Barack Obama this, Barack Obama that. Barack Obama is fighting this, Barack Obama is fighting that. Barack Obama is trying this, Barack Obama is trying that. Barack Obama is failing this, Barack Obama is failing that. Long live democracy, freedom and globalization. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
Political reality is an ugly beast. A real politician sometimes must accept a genocide or two as a part of national folklore. Rich countries usually have long histories of violence and unpunished war crimes. Stealing or killing the previous owner of land and resources is the easiest way to become rich. On that pile of political filth accumulated over years/centuries/millennia (older nations have longer tracks of aggressive and arrogant behaviour) and higher than Mount Everest we are supposed to create the new world concerned about green technologies, renewable energy and sustainability. If America loses its economic power, will its war criminals be arrested and prosecuted by other countries? If not, why not? Everyone is innocent unless proven guilty, but I guess torturing people (including communists and Muslims who, according to some people (including me) are also humans) and attacking sovereign countries is a tricky activity and something illegal might happen (e.g. if someone disobeys the rules of gentle torture). I don’t know the original meaning behind the word “patriotism”, but for modern people living in Serbia, America or your country it means toleration of the worst scum sharing your national identity. The new president will, under peaceful circumstances, rarely (never if we are talking about war crimes) prosecute the previous one. The rule old as history of organized society is that powerful nations will misuse their power and provoke others to wait for their opportunity to do the same thing. When you live in Serbia, you witness a lot of both domestic and foreign stupidity and monstrosity. You just don’t mess around with violent people involved in politics. The more disgusting you are, the more respected you will be as a creator of new political reality. And it just accumulates, layer by layer. We are about to face the greatest challenges ever. At the same time, the capacity to respond to them is decreasing. No matter how “democratic” your society is, I doubt that a sane, thinking and independent person can do much. I doubt that such a person would even try. There are just too many ugly schemes and combinations in the past. We need brilliant people on the top more than ever, but (real) skeletons in the closet of any nation with rich history allows only below average individuals to reach the top. They, spineless as they are (in order to not to disagree too much with other colleagues), can only change their behaviour to worse. They don’t neither care about the situation nor understand it. We have a single lifetime to try and succeed or fail. We must try, but we can’t. As the time passes by, both political filth and environmental challenges are growing, just like the gap between them. We shall need geniuses on the top and we shall have mediocrities instead. Political reality and environmental complications are like two gears moving in opposite directions. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
Political hierarchy is the only example in nature where sludge separates on the top. It's just the way that system works. You can protest against it, but it will still be the way that system works. You can't simply add cosmetic changes. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
For the second time this year we are being indoctrinated to celebrate someone's death. Muammar Gaddafi was a product of colonial past of his nation and the fact that Muslims are being treated as a subhuman species that deserves to be hated, ignored, tortured and killed. The people of Libya have at least tried to change their political reality, contrary to some other "democratic" nations non-capable to do anything about Vietnam and other bestialities made by their politicians. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
In these times of changes news and newspapers can hardly anticipate anything relevant. We mustn't forget that even now the urgency of the change towards sustainability and renewable energy will be there even when we don't pay attention to it. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
"So we had better understand this new era we're heading into. The operative word here is "new." We need to stop thinking of ourselves as "post" something—postcolonial, postwar, post-Cold War, post-post-Cold War. Those eras are meaningless today. Wash them out of your mind. They explain nothing about where we are now." Thomas Friedman, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded", page 27 The same thing applies to post-industrial. You can't have the biggest industrial ever lead by post-industrial mentality and post-industrial flow of investments of money, knowledge, efforts, and creativity. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
Is America a democratic country? Would the politicians on the top support a new Kyoto Protocol if their voters demanded them to do so? It's nice to have a freedom to express your opinion, uniqueness, and creativity. America is still a hotbed for talented people. They don't call it the American dream for nothing. But, what if an irreversible disaster is the worst thing a living being can (collectively) cause, worse than any war crime or eliminated dissident? |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
The whole concept of fundraising and political campaigns is relatively new. What if the idea of choosing a politician at some hidden place and pushing him/her to the people can't stand the pressure of complexity in front of us? If no one hates your vision or feels uncomfortable about it, it's not a vision at all. We need a collective genius focused to the future instead of a herd adjusted to the past. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
According to the Serbian media, New Generation Power from America is planning to invest 4 billion dollars in renewable energy in Serbia. Serbia is specific because it approximately represents an average technologically and politically advanced country. There will be many false promises and plans related to renewable energy and sustainability all around the world, a lot of clumsy efforts to do something. Some of them will be real. I hope that the one at the beginning of this comment is serious. |
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Aleksandar Malečić |
An elected politician supposed to deal with many important issues (thinking and behaving as a typical “patriot” of yours) for four years or in some countries as long as he/she is alive is a new concept still in its experimental stage. Can it survive in times of rapid changes and complexity? What is a possible alternative? Is it a mutant with many heads or no head at all? |
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