At
some point in the last fifty years, while we were all focused on
day-to-day events in our own parts of the world, something important
and unexpected happened that we didn't notice. This was a half-century,
for those lucky enough to live in the right part of the right part of
the world at least, of unprecedented affluence. It saw a groundswell of
at least nominal democracy in parts of the world that could not
remember or imagine what democracy was. It was a time when technology
morphed from being a tool of industrial efficiency to a new theology.
But
for every action there is a reaction, and the reaction was what we
missed in the details and minutiae of our daily lives. That reaction
was a steady erosion of our belief in and respect for the law and the
truth, to the point that today they have almost ceased to matter.
Take
a look around: In the US we have the Cheney-Bush regime, in power
because we don't really know the truth about who won either of the last
two elections, and have no way of ever knowing that truth. This regime
has nothing but contempt for the law, and consider themselves above it,
not bound by it. They are quite overt and unapologetic about continuing
their illegal wiretapping of citizens. Now that the end has justified
(in their minds, anyway) the means, they no longer care about
concealing their deliberate distortion and lies to Congress and to the
people about their reasons for invading, destroying and occupying Iraq.
It's done, it's history. The fact that they broke, and plan to continue
to break, their own country's laws does not matter. The fact that they
have publicly repudiated international law because it is not under
their control is a trifle. The fact that they lied egregiously to the
parts of the government that are supposed to keep them in check, and to
the people who allegedly elected them, is of no consequence. Finished.
Nothing more to talk about here, folks, move along.
Take a look,
too, at the behaviour of the corporatist oligopolies that dominate and
run our global economy. To them, any amount of socially and
environmentally immoral behaviour is acceptable provided it is in the
interest of "maximizing shareholder value". If such behaviour is
illegal, the corporatists will buy their way out of jail by lobbying
politicians to change the law, or, even easier, lobbying them to simply
not enforce it. They will threaten uncooperative politicians with
bankrolling of their political opponents (they always ensure there are two corporatist-friendly parties firmly in their pockets in each political jurisdiction so they can do this, and if an corporatist-unfriendly
government should somehow get into power, they will bribe their
government friends in other countries to quietly, illegally overthrow
it). If that doesn't work, they will simply threaten to take their
'business' elsewhere, to a country where their immoral behaviour is
legal, or at least tolerated because they have stolen and pillaged all
that country's resources so the people have no choice left but to do
what they're told, or starve.
Having bypassed the law, the
corporatists are now busy rewriting the truth, suing in court for the
right to lie to customers ('advertising' is hence redefined as the
right of corporatists to blanket the media, which they mostly own, with
lies and propaganda). I sat here last night watching an 'advertisement'
for Shell Canada featuring an actor pretending to be a scientist who
cared about remediating ("for the people") the Alberta Tar Sands,
Canada's most disgraceful and accelerating environmental plundering,
and shook my head in shame, anger and disbelief. The actor was careful
to stress that this 'development' was essential to protect the economic
security and energy independence of Canada and its allies. Massive lies
bought with massive amounts of money, blanketing the media. As Goebbels
said, "If you say something often enough, the people will believe it."
Or
take a look at the media, which are mostly owned by corporatist
oligopolies and which, to save money for their 'shareholders',
increasingly rely on governments to spoon-feed them the 'news'. At one
time the press prided itself on its independence, and its relentless
search for the truth, but now it has new marching orders. It turns out
that searching for the truth is not only expensive, it is risky,
because if you say something counter to the 'new truth' spouted by
those with power and wealth, they will sue you and force you to recant
the real truth. Shareholders don't like lawsuits. So the media found a
way around barefaced lying to the citizens (corporatist advertising can
look after the barefaced lying, and the media are actually paid
for that advertising): They have mostly stopped being information media
and morphed to become entertainment media. This has the advantage of
citizen complicity: If the citizens no longer believe what the media
are saying, they will stop relying on the media for information, and
will only watch them for entertainment. Presto, Fox 'News'. No pretense
of telling the truth, so you can't be accused by those with moral
scruples of lying. You're just giving the people what they want. An
opinion is merely an opinion, devoid of information, so it can't be
'untruthful'. Problem solved. If people really want to know the truth
they can seek alternative media (and we know most of them don't --
compare their ratings to ours).
What
has moved into the vacuum where law and truth once held sway is naked
power and wealth. Might makes right, and money defines truth. If those
with power say this is the way it will be, that is the way it will be,
and the law does not matter. If those with wealth spend it to blanket
the airwaves and the media with their message of what is happening and
what happened, then that is what is happening and what happened, and
the truth does not matter. And if you dare mourn the death of law or
truth, the cynics and spin doctors will shut you down and shut you up
by telling you it's always
been that way, that power has always trumped the law and wealth has
always exerted its influence to obscure and restate the truth.
But it hasn't
always been that way. It is too easy, and dishonest, to shrug off as
mere illusion the prevalence of rule by democratic law that applies to
all, and truth as something pervasive that is kept alive by people
despite the volume and ubiquity of propaganda. Of course there have
been people who have been able to get away with murder, even mass
murder, at various times in our history. Of course Orwellian deceptions
have been promulgated to lead masses of people to acts of madness and
atrocity, and to rewrite history to cover up these deceptions. But our
civilization rests absolutely on law and truth as two of its
cornerstones, and without belief in at least the possibility and
ultimate prevalence of law and truth, civilization cannot be sustained.
As soon as the bully imposes his rule over the sandlot baseball game,
changing the rules so his team cannot lose, and changing the reported
score so that his team is declared to be winning when they are losing,
the other team will simply cease to play and walk away. Civilization is
nothing more than an elaborate game we have all agreed to play because
the rules appear to be mostly fair, and the scorekeeping mostly
truthful.
Those of us on the pessimistic side of the blogosphere
have been predicting the collapse of civilization in this century,
brought about by some combination of overpopulation, overconsumption,
global warming, the end of oil, epidemic disease, cascading natural
disasters and universal access to recipes for weapons of mass
destruction. What we may not have noticed, like those in the Great
Depression who didn't call it that until it had been in full swing for
four years, is that civilizational collapse has already begun. Not with
any of the aforementioned 'bangs' but with a whimper: the loss of
importance of law and truth, as the belief and respect of many for them
has slowly eroded to nothing.
No surprise, then, that most
people don't vote, and instinctively believe that what they do as
individual citizens and consumers doesn't matter, doesn't make any
difference. On one side you have conservatives calling for
de-regulation and the libertarians calling for dismantling of
government, so that power will shift from the corporatists in
government to the corporatists in industry. On the other side you have
the liberals calling for tighter regulation, so that the power will
shift from the corporatists in industry to the corporatists in
government that are beholden to the corporatists in industry for their
campaign financing. So why should the citizen care, when it really
doesn't matter? The law doesn't matter, because if you're rich and
powerful you can get away with anything, and if you're poor and
disenfranchised they'll execute you on trumped-up charges without a
second thought. The truth doesn't matter, because those with wealth and
power will use all their resources to drown it out and replace it with
what they want you to believe. And if you're too adamant about telling
the truth, they'll use their money and power to sue you, force you to
recant, label you a 'terrorist', make you their whipping-boy, or even
have you killed or overthrown.
So soon the people without wealth
or power also start to realize that the law and the truth have ceased
to matter. Now civilization is in trouble. It is OK for the rich and
powerful to lie and cheat, but when everyone starts to do it the whole
society starts to break down. Just as the stock market is a Ponzi
scheme, a 'confidence game' that can only be sustained as long as the
majority believe there is somehow value there, our society can only
continue if the vast majority have confidence that it 'works' for them,
that its advantages outweigh its disadvantages. Goebbels maxim
notwithstanding, people will only take so much propaganda when the
evidence all around them contradicts it. Eventually, they will realize
that they are being 'had'. When reported GDP keeps rising but real
income for 90% keeps falling, when the majority are working two or
three menial, meaningless jobs to make ends meet while a handful hoard
obscene wealth, when people get chronically sick and die and the only
possible culprit left is the poisons the rich and powerful have
thoughtlessly pumped into the food, water and air, when the Lomborgian
denials of global warming become ludicrous in the face of wild,
devastating swings in weather -- the people, whose acceptance and
participation in this unfair con game are needed to continue it, will
just throw down their mitts and bats and walk away, refuse to play any
more.
They will do what those who have walked away from past
collapsing civilizations have done -- they will build a new
civilization, a new society, from the bottom up.
One where the law and the truth matter.
The bullies from the old game will not be invited to play. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
