Keith,
I honestly believe that this process happens when population demand on
resources is such that, to survive, one country needs to control the
resources of another. We are in an end-stage process described so well by
Jeremy Rifkin in Entropy.
Bill Ward
On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 19:10:22 +0100 Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes:
> Ed,
>
> Yes, a good article ("There's no going back" by Thomas Homer-Dixon,
> Globe &
> Mail, 11 September) and worth reading.
>
> There's an important sentence in his penultimate paragraph which is
> at the
> root of modern developed society. However, he fluffs answering his
> own
> question in the last paragraph.
>
> The important sentence referred to:
> <<<<
> How can societies make responsible and democratic decisions about
> climate
> change, for example, when nearly half their citizens -- as a recent
> National Science Foundation poll found in the United States -- are
> so
> ignorant of basic science that they don't know it takes a year for
> Earth to
> go round the sun?
> >>>>
>
> It isn't just basic science, it's also basic economics -- in fact,
> it's
> also basic all sorts of things such as history, geography, and
> goodness
> knows what else. The average modern citizen is bewildered by most of
> the
> policies that parties list on their manifestos.
>
> The complexity of modern life has two main effects:
>
> (a) the vote will continue declining;
>
> (b) most developed countries (whether those with proportional
> representation systems or first-past-the-post) will continue to
> drift
> towards a two-party system with similar middle-of-the-road policies
> because
> neither can afford to go out on a limb.
>
> I suggest that we're drifting steadily away from anything that can
> be
> called "democracy" and towards special-interest representation
> (involving
> maybe 20% of the population at the very most).
>
> Keith
>
> <<<<
> There's no going back
>
> After last year's atrocity, we craved revenge and reassurance -- but
> the
> challenge is far more complex. Our leaders may not be up to the job,
> says
> THOMAS HOMER-DIXON
>
>
> By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON
> Wednesday, September 11, 2002 Print Edition, Page A11, Globe and
> Mail
>
>
> The attacks of last Sept. 11 tore a ragged hole in the fabric of our
> reality. Through that hole we glimpsed something hideous. As in our
> worst
> nightmares, it was indistinct and incomprehensible. We couldn't see
> its
> beginning, its end, or its true form. But we knew immediately that
> this
> thing -- whatever it was -- was both profoundly dangerous and
> utterly
> terrifying.
>
> Our first response was to back away, shield our eyes, and try to
> return our
> world to normal as quickly as possible. We did this, partly by
> using
> well-worn categories, distinctions and theories to explain the
> horror:
> moral categories of good and evil, psychological distinctions
> between
> sanity and madness, and crude stereotypes about the character of
> Islam.
>
> To the extent that we could see the attacks through these existing
> lenses,
> we could understand and discount them. They were just extreme forms
> of
> phenomena we already grasped; they were appalling and wrenching, to
> be
> sure, but we didn't have to question our basic assumptions about the
> world.
>
> We also turned for help to people with power and knowledge -- that
> is, to
> our leaders and experts. We asked our political leaders to develop
> policies
> to protect us without requiring great change in our lives. We sought
> out
> experts of all types -- on terrorism, on the Middle East and the
> Arab
> world, and on the economic effects of the attacks. Their incessant
> background prattle was reassuring, because it helped us believe
> that
> someone, somewhere, knew what was going on.
>
> In these ways, we've busily stitched over the tear in reality's
> fabric.
> Alas, the stitches aren't strong. Events are multiplying that our
> conventional categories and theories can't easily explain. Moreover,
> our
> leaders' pronouncements and our experts' prattle seems less and
> less
> reassuring, because it's dawning on us that, much of the time, these
> people
> don't really know what's going on at all. Most importantly, they
> rarely
> have clear or useful solutions to the truly tough problems.
>
> The Middle East is aflame and no one really has a clue any more how
> to
> bring durable peace to the region. India and Pakistan remain on the
> brink
> of a war that could escalate into a nuclear exchange; again, there's
> a
> dearth of credible solutions to the underlying crisis in Kashmir.
> The
> United States is planning to attack Iraq, but its plans are widely
> opposed,
> even by staunch allies, largely because no one can really predict
> the
> downside risk. (Will oil prices go through the roof? Will Saddam
> Hussein
> release smallpox when U.S. forces are at the gates of Baghdad?)
>
> On the economic front, the world is a mess, and critical economic
> policymakers -- such as the heads of national central banks, the
> International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank -- seem flummoxed.
> Many of
> the richest economies are stagnating, while in poor countries nearly
> three
> billion people still live on less than $2 a day. The U.S. economy
> --
> critical to world growth -- is sliding sideways. European growth is
> also
> almost non-existent, and Germany's unemployment rate is nearing
> double
> digits. The Japanese Nikkei Index has dropped to levels unseen in
> two
> decades, with renewed doubts about the stability of the country's
> banking
> system. Latin America is in financial crisis; a decade of market
> liberalization on the continent has produced growth rates half those
> of the
> 1960s and a rise in the number of poor people. Africa and its 700
> million
> inhabitants aren't even on the economic map.
>
> But it's on environmental issues that our leaders and experts have
> proved
> most inadequate. In the last century, humankind's total impact on
> the
> planet's environment (measured, principally, by the flow of
> materials
> through our economies and our output of wastes) has multiplied
> about
> 16-fold. We're now disrupting fundamental flows of energy and
> materials
> within the biosphere -- that layer of life on Earth's surface as
> thick,
> proportionately, as an apple's skin -- and we're producing profound
> changes
> in cycles of key elements, like nitrogen, sulfur and carbon.
>
> These changes will have immense consequences for life, industry and
> agriculture across the planet. Yet, just when we need, more than
> ever,
> aggressive policies to deal with our common environmental
> challenges, the
> recent summit in Johannesburg produced a pathetic spectacle of
> cacophony
> and global gridlock.
>
> This combination of intractable political, economic, and
> environmental
> challenges is not a recipe for a humane and peaceful world society.
> Looking
> at them together, one gets the dismaying sense that deep and
> inexorable
> forces are building within the global system. At some point, these
> forces
> could combine in unforeseeable ways to cause a sharp breakdown of
> world order.
>
> Then, once again, we'll suddenly see through the fabric of security
> and
> regularity that we've so carefully woven for ourselves: It will be
> torn
> away, we'll be naked, and we'll feel that dreadful terror once more.
> Only
> this time, our leaders and experts won't be able to help us at all.
>
> How can we choose a different future? First, we need to recognize
> that the
> relationship between us, on one hand, and our leaders and experts,
> on the
> other, is entirely symbiotic: We provide these people with the perks
> of
> authority and ego-gratification; they provide us with the illusion
> that
> somebody knows what's going on and that we'll be safe. But our
> leaders and
> experts increasingly can't fulfill their part of the bargain,
> because the
> systems we want them to explain and manage (from the international
> economy
> to our relationship with the biosphere) are too complex and opaque
> and are
> changing too fast.
>
> Second, we have to extract ourselves from this false bargain and
> reassert
> our responsibility for our own future. In other words, if we can't
> count on
> our leaders and experts, we have to get more involved in making
> critical
> decisions ourselves. And this change will itself require two others:
> a
> revitalization of our democratic institutions (perhaps through the
> creative
> use of Internet-based debate and voting procedures) so that the
> average
> citizen can participate more effectively in governance; and, most
> importantly, a dramatic improvement in the average citizen's
> knowledge of
> current affairs and of the technical and scientific facts that these
> days
> bear on our lives.
>
> How can societies make responsible and democratic decisions about
> climate
> change, for example, when nearly half their citizens -- as a recent
> National Science Foundation poll found in the United States -- are
> so
> ignorant of basic science that they don't know it takes a year for
> Earth to
> go around the sun? How can we decide whether we should go to war
> with
> Saddam Hussein when so few of us know the difference between
> plutonium and
> enriched uranium as the basic material for atomic bombs? (Both are
> really
> bad, but we should be much more worried if Mr. Hussein has a lot of
> the
> latter rather than the former.)
>
> Citizen knowledge is something that we can start improving right
> away.
> Better knowledge won't necessarily help us come up with better
> solutions to
> our complex problems than those proposed by our current leaders and
> experts. But it will help us discriminate, collectively and
> democratically,
> between those problems where we know enough to promote decisive
> solutions,
> and those where solutions are difficult to find, the risks of
> mistake are
> large, and prudence and caution are in order until we know more.
>
>
> Thomas Homer-Dixon is author of The Ingenuity Gap and director of
> the
> Centre for the Study of Peace and Conflict at the University of
> Toronto.
> >>>>
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
> ------------
>
> Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com
> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
> Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
________________________________________________________________________
>
>
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