World government

 

click to enlarge
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_sociopol/nwo65_04.jpg
this is part of an even more extensive graphic to be found here:
http://www.scribd.com/NWO2012/d/15764393-wordlgovmap

Academic blue-sky thinker Robin Hanson says:

The world has many problems and some of them are global [...] war, global warming, and promoting innovation [...]    a lot of these problems would get solved a lot better with a high capacity world government. Such a government could better reduce uncertainty and secrets, enforce compliance, and promote compromises between conflicting interests.

I used to think that, too. Now I want to ask, "World government - by whom, how?" Certainly some issues transcend national limitations - but would a centralised global power be the answer?

Thoughtful responses (rather than the usual lazy barracking found on the internet) would be truly welcome.

P.S. Here's the original Blofeld:

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In praise of Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke is the Low Life columnist for the Spectator magazine. He lives in Devon's South Hams and mixes humbly (a word he's fond of) with the ordinary, poor and raffish, reporting on them and himself with lapidary prose and that quality the ancient Chinese prized and called "human-heartedness".

 

A collection - not to be missed, we were re-reading it aloud this morning with our wake-up tea, and laughing - is available here (a gift for yourself, and maybe for some of your friends too):

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Low-Life-Middle-Aged-Search-Point/dp/1907595511/ref=sr_1_1/277-4349049-2951361?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403330788&sr=1-1&keywords=low+life+jeremy+clarke

 

 

Here (16 Aug 2003) he is helping out on the Whack-the-Malteaser stall at his sister's annual charity fete held in the local centre for those with learning difficulties:

 

After Ray, Maurice came over and tried his luck. My sister loves Maurice. He's her pet. She found him a work experience placement recently, at Tesco's, as a bread packer. Every day he packs bread until they tell him to stop, then he goes home. He loves packing bread so much, says my sister, he can't wait to go to work again the next day. Maurice was accurate with the mallet, but his timing was way off.

 

He was far too slow. By the time he'd brought the mallet down, the Malteaser had already crossed the table and been picked up, examined, and eaten by an onlooker. Maurice then walked away with the mallet in his hand, the silly arse. I didn't notice it had gone until the next customers presented themselves, and I had to close the stall temporarily to go and look for it.

 

The terrific heat was a major problem for the stall this year. This year's fun day was the day of the hottest temperature since records began. The Malteasers' chocolate coating began to melt and they stuck to the inside of the tube.

 

Customers were standing at my table, mallet raised, eyes narrowly focused on the pipe's exit, and the Malteasers wouldn't come out. The only way to shift them was to blow down the pipe. This was unsatisfactory for a number of reasons, but mainly because it meant putting my head nearly in line with the mallet's descent.

 

I requisitioned Jim, gave him my supply box of Malteasers and asked him to take them inside and shove them in the fridge. 'I can't do it!' said Jim, which is the only thing Jim ever says, and he trotted away with them towards the house. Later, when I popped over to get the Malteasers out of the fridge, they weren't in there. 'Jim,' I said when I found him, 'what did you do with the Malteasers?' I can't do it!' said Jim pointing at his mouth. 'I can't do it!' Jim had only gone and scoffed the lot. I seized his face with both hands and gave him a big kiss.

 

Because with no more Malteasers to Whack, that, thank God, was that for another year.

 

His collection is subtitled "One Middle-Aged Man in Search of the Point", but like the Chinese sages, in a way he's found it, in seeing and loving.

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The corncrake cried too

A few years ago, a cold and foggy December morning found me walking back from an early medical appointment. The streets were quiet. A low winter sun rose behind a huge old beech tree towering over a scrubby piece of land. Shafts of brilliant hazy sunlight gleamed through icy fog and leafless black branches to create a scene of the most extraordinary beauty.

I stopped for a moment, wished I had a camera but walked on because there is no capturing these moments, no way to possess them.

Does the beauty of the fields delight you? Surely, yes; it is a beautiful part of a right beautiful whole. Fitly indeed do we at times enjoy the serene calm of the sea, admire the sky, the stars, the moon, the sun. Yet is any of these thy concern? Dost thou venture to boast thyself of the beauty of any one of them? Art thou decked with spring's flowers? is it thy fertility that swelleth in the fruits of autumn? Why art thou moved with empty transports? why embracest thou an alien excellence as thine own? Never will fortune make thine that which the nature of things has excluded from thy ownership.

Boethius - The Consolation of Philosophy (around 524 AD)

More recently.
The street outside falls strangely silent under a brilliant summer sun. Nothing moves, no sounds, not even birds. Breathless and timeless - even the clock seems to have slowed its relentless tick. A curiously beautiful stillness but only for a moment.  A car approaches. The spell is broken.

Natural beauty is like that – impossible to grasp beyond momentary impressions. Impossible to own or take away its alien excellence. 

Then a corncrake began to call in the meadow across the river, a strange, dispassionate sound, that made him feel not quite satisfied, not quite sure. It was not all achieved. The moon, in her white and naked candour, was beyond him. He felt a little numbness, as one who has gloves on. He could not feel that clear, clean moon. There was something betwixt him and her, as if he had gloves on. Yet he ached for the clear touch, skin to skin — even of the moonlight. He wanted a further purity, a newer cleanness and nakedness. The corncrake cried too.

D.H. Lawrence – The Overtone (1933)

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Fracking bubble to pop?

One of the cogent points made in Richard D Hall's talk in Alvechurch back in March, was that protest is useless - it goes unreported, or gets smacked down physically. If you want to oppose fracking, he said, the best way is to show that there just aren't the economically recoverable resources that have been claimed by the oil industry and the government (who each have their own motives for bigging it up).

And so it proves. Last month (htp: John Michael Greer) the field in Monterey, California - previously said to have 64% of the potential shale oil output in the lower 48 States - had its estimate cut by 96%. The prospective cornucopia of 13.7 billion barrels has dwindled to a spit of 600 million.

How do they get these estimates, anyway? It's not as though the industry has Superman's X-ray vision. Is it much more than holding a wet finger in the air to check which way the wind is blowing? And would that be the resource wind, or the political wind?

Now what?

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While watching Waybuloo

The other day as Granddaughter sat on my knee watching Waybuloo on the TV, I began to think about her memories of childhood. As she’s not yet two years old she has yet to lay down any long term memories, which is odd when you consider how much mental development goes on at her age.

I wondered if there is a connection between our lack of early childhood memories and adult mental processes. Well you have to think about something during Waybuloo. If you’ve watched it you'll know why. Granddaughter can't stand it for long which is promising.

Anyway, If I remember rightly B F Skinner once wrote that we don’t acquire early long-term memories because we cannot remember what we cannot articulate. In other words Granddaughter cannot form long-term memories until her language reaches a certain level of development – until she can describe things to herself.

So here’s the issue I mulled over.

If we need language to imprint ideas on our minds then what about ideas with which we don’t agree? Do we disagree with them by avoiding, distorting or modifying the language in which they are expressed? Do we actively avoid something analogous to the imprinting of memories via language?

Obviously we don’t always do that, but it seems to be extremely common as far as I can see. Online Guardian comments are an entertaining example. Many Guardian readers simply reject ideas by distorting the language. It isn’t only the tiresome non sequitur crowd either. On the other hand, accurate language sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb.

So as I see it, we often disagree with an idea by not describing it accurately, even to ourselves. It may be as subtle as altering the tone or the style in which the idea is usually expressed. A touch of sarcasm or incredulity, a hint of exaggeration or a slight shift in a crucial emphasis.

Just as Granddaughter can’t use language to imprint long term memories on her mind, we seem to avoid the language of ideas we don’t like. As if we are avoiding the imprinting process because we know the power of it. As if we are aware of the dangers of accurate language, aware that accurate language is powerful language.

So we use language to understand but we also use it to misunderstand where allegiances are threatened. We may name the idea, name its proponents and tag both with pejorative associations, but we avoid accurate language because we must avoid it to maintain the argument. Often for good reasons of course, but the reasons have to be derived from pre-existing allegiances. We can’t get too close to ideas we prefer to deny.

Obviously these things are diffuse and vary between individuals. Yet whenever a contentious subject attracts lots of online comment, one side seems to understand the issue and one side seems to misunderstand it – deliberately as far as I can see.

It’s interesting to watch – better than Waybuloo at any rate.

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The one great principle

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.

Charles Dickens - Bleak House

I’ve used this Dickens quote before because it's a favourite of mine with wide applicability.

For example, If the word government is substituted for English law, it almost becomes a law of nature. It's what I observed for most of my working life - government making business for itself. Mostly during the latter years of my sentence - as life became progressively more bureaucratic.

The commercial world makes business for itself  but government has the power to do it without the trouble and inconvenience of attracting customers. Hence the close links between big business and big government. Certain professions and organisations cuddle up to government for the same reason.

From this aspect, Dickens’ monstrous maze covers anything from minutiae such as the date of the next meeting (because there always has to be one) to protecting ministerial budgets to promoting custom and practice as a guiding principle. And yes, I have heard custom and practice used as an argument for resisting beneficial change.

Take science for example. A key reason why it is so politically attractive to bend science into a policy instrument is that it creates business. Business for government, people in government, corporations entangled with government, government supported charities - and of course scientists.

The nutritional sciences are a case in point. What is nutritional advice worth after decades of study and the expenditure of uncounted billions? May I suggest an answer somewhere in the vicinity of not much? May I further suggest that a moderate and varied diet seems to cover it?

As far as I can see from personal experience, a traditional main meal of meat and two veg followed by a pud plus maybe a glass or two of something in the evening is fine. Not quite my taste, but it didn't cause my parents' generation to keel over at an early age. Too many calories do cause problems as does too much booze, but we've known that for centuries.

It doesn’t matter though – food fads give rise to food regulations and food regulations are business. Looping back to Dickens, it’s a coherent scheme.

Government bungles everything it touches, partly because bungling is good business too. Lessons can be learned, relearned then learned all over again. Newspapers report the bungles, committees investigate them, auditors audit them and politicians take advantage of them.

Let’s finish with a question and a possible answer.

How will the drugs problem be resolved?

Unfortunately it may well be the case that so much business is created by not resolving it that there is no business reason why it should ever be resolved. In that case, unless the drugs problem becomes a threat to social and political stability, unless it becomes a threat to government business, then the current situation seems likely to continue.

So maybe the drugs issue isn’t a question of weighing up moral choices or policies which do the least harm. Maybe it’s merely a question of whatever policy generates the most government business with the least political risk.

Sounds cynical, but when it comes to making those millions of micro-decisions which comprise social and political trends, then people can be very cynical indeed. Especially when it isn’t obvious – when custom and practice so conveniently sidestep the rational and ethical faculties.

When government folk are making business for themselves.

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"Once is happenstance..."

"... Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action," said Ian Fleming's Auric Goldfinger:


(Birmingham)



(Coventry)

(Essex)

"A bizarre coincidence," says the Daily Mail. Move along, please.

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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.