I think that Eliot Spitzer is more likely to be right about this. The best and brightest will go into economics and game theory which creates a police state mentality with a sociopathic morality. The result will not be the culture of Russia and China but Italy and Sicily as we find on our Supreme Court with the church justices and the control of Americans from cradle to grave. We Indian people know very well about that culture. It has given us 80% unemployment on compliant reservations and rampant child abuse and addiction. What I think is more interesting is how Europeans arrive at these forms no matter which side of the political spectrum they take. One side speaks egalitarian or higher morality and steals the poor blind. The other side speaks freedom and turns most of the people into losers and makes the market supreme over elected governments because of some superstitious story about invisible hands. That is not a problem of Democracy, Socialism, Communitarianism or Communism or any other "ism." It's a problem of culture and a product arrived at through psycho-physical anesthetization of empathic functions.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2012 4:12 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Vacant spaces of power As we sink deeper into a 1930s-type depression and growing unemployment, particularly of the young, what Western governments ought to fear more than anything else is subversion from within, not riots, marches or street occupations. If the latter become too extreme or untidy they can be dealt with by rubber bullets and water cannons (or even armoured cars and light tanks, such as those Prime Minister Tony Blair caused to be parked menacingly at Heathrow Airport only a few years ago after a fit of paranoia). No, what's to be feared are conspiracies by young individuals with a deep and genuine concern for the unemployed who proceed over years to penetrate the highest levels of the power elites. In the 1930s, there was, apparently, a ready-made solution in the form of Russian communism, so there were communist spy cells in all the Western countries. In England we had intellectuals such as Blunt, Philby, Maclean, Burgess and Cairncross (the "Cambridge Five") and, in America, there were Greenglass, Fuchs, Hiss, White, Silvermaster, Browder and the Rosenbergs. In Europe, the communist parties of various countries became very powerful and, after WWII, some became voluntarily enfolded within the Soviet system while others, such as Italy and France, came close to voting for independent communist governments. Communism of the former totalitarian, top-down, highly centralized nature of the former Soviet Union or Chinese Republic doesn't seem to have found favour so far with young intellectuals today, although there was a brief flurry of excitement some years ago about a vaguely similar ideological movement that was known under the ponderous name of communitarianism. But this was, and remains, such a Liquorish Allsorts type of movement without any political consensus between its proponents that it has little direct influence. But there are stirrings of something similar to Marxism rising again in the Western world. The name of Marx is beginning to be mentioned a little more frequently than, say, ten years ago. Despite the predominant philosophy of the last 20/30 years that "Greed is OK" and the increasing corruption of politicians, officials and the banking sector there is still something about the ideas of communism or socialism that resonates. And, of course, this is likely to be the case. Millions of years of living on the African savanna have, for maximum efficiency and survival, shaped our species into living in small social groups and our genes into giving us quite detailed physiological and psychological specifications. As to the latter we are generally altruistic rather than tyrannical, although strong social stratification came to the fore at times when adolescent boys became too boisterous or if a neighbouring group tried to invade our food gathering territory or steal our pubescent daughters. This, and a great deal more about human nature, is now known by a still microscopically small proportion of evolutionary biologists. In order to describe ourselves realistically we no longer need the sort of philosophical debate of the last few thousand years, or the political ideologies of the last hundred years or so as highly centralized nation-states came into existence as byproducts of mass warfare (internal or external). I am not, of course, suggesting that "cells" of evolutionary scientists are going to secretly invade the various centres of political and business power within the elite, or what I term the 20-class, in order to carry out some form of coup-d'etat. But the children of this class, rather than the state-educated 80-class (increasingly innumerate and illiterate), educated in private schools (each competing for quality) are going to be the first to absorb the more realistic notions concerning our evolution, and thus best governance. Indeed, the more successful modern corporations are already paying attention. Able to recruit the creme-de-la-creme of the elite universities, they no longer pride themselves on massive multi-tiered organization charts but are learning to lateralize into smaller specialized groups. However, the new "movement", if it is not a conspiracy in the old-fashioned sense, will still keep a low profile for some time yet. Political correctness, which has rapidly advanced since WWII, is still too deep, pervasive and governmentally imposed, to be overcome directly. As always with defunct institutions, the old culture has to start breaking down first. But as almost all advanced governments are already technically bankrupt with no financial solution to hand, save yet more money-printing, we can assume that only those with realistic ideas will be drawn into the vacant spaces. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/>
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