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Re: Future Scenarios ... by Luke Rondinaro 26 September 2001 21:58 UTC |
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((Responses follow questions below))
Petros Haritatos <haritatos@athenian.net> wrote:
these are hefty questions you are asking ... I think they are worth looking into more closely, and would appreciate if you could take them a step further by providing your own views on the topics you are raising.Petros Haritatos, Athens, GreeceHere's another question for the list on the topic of future scenarios. The public mind has always associated Marxist socialism and communism with the dystopia of Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World.
But isn't it all the more likely that such futuristic societies gone awry are the natural development of a decadent, hegemonizing Western culture in Europe and the United States rather than what grew up in the Eastern bloc under the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China? ... What do you all think?
<The public mind posits a connection between the social order of Marxist societies and the futuristic social orders of BNW and 1984. This had a lot to do with the Western media (esp. in the US) during the Cold War which used these novels to say 'this is what will happen here if we don't stop the spread of Marxist communism and socialism in the world>
<But the setting of the novels is Western and has nothing to do (directly) with the communist world or with socialism in a Marxist framework. Not only is the setting Western, notice carefully: The forms of social expression are Western. They derive politically from Classical Liberalism and economically from a devolved and degenerated form of capitalism. The social-economic cycle of the drug soma in Brave New World derives from market-based principles of capitalism, and not Marxian socialism. BNW is primarily about three things in a social/economic context: commercialism, consumerism, and a media-driven social order. All forms of social expression, all varieties of social institutions are based in the media (including education) and the media is a branch of the state. Media manipulation is used by the government to both educate the young and continually re-socialize - with the help of soma - the citizenry of the BNW. 1984 with all its particular social implements - "Newsspeak", the Big Brother screens, "Ingsoc", etc. - is comparable (in this sense) with Brave New World. Both of these fictional, futurist societies - despite their many differences are based in a social order where 'capitalism' has run amuck & is, in an authoritarian sense, ruling the citizenry.>
Doesn't the West, under Classic Liberalism - in the 19th century sense of the word - have more of a potential to become totalitarian than the communist world ever (supposedly) was? What are your thoughts on this matter? ...
<The West does have more of this potential within itself to become totalitarian. Big business tolerates no competition. It tolerates no dissention within its ranks. The history of the 19th and 20th centuries demonstrates this fact over and over again. The history of Latin American, I believe, illustrates the matter quite nicely. Native populations and workers are exploited for the benefit of these companies with the backing of the US (or else in return for the US turning a blind eye to these abuses as they occur). With many of the new technologies being developed with computers & biotech, the potential for such abuses has to the potential to increase. Such corporations have, and will have as time goes on, more a capacity for becoming totalitarian. >
My own (conservative-libertarian) fears about a New World Order/world government scenario in the next fifty to hundred years (more likely in the next few centuries rather) have never been soley a fear of "socialism" or Marxism or even of just "big government." My fears are of a future world where "big business" (always negligent and willfully ignorant of the needs of the individual, the common person, the worker, and the masses in general) merges with "big government" to form a social monstrosity the likes humanity has never seen.
<As the world becomes more globalized, which it must do, there's more of a potential for political and economic organizations to become intertwined as never before. In part, this is unavoidable. What is avoidable, however, and must be avoided is for multi-national corporations to merge with political organizations - state structures and internat. political orgs. - & as a result to acquire distinct political power in the world. International bodies must be held accountable - to the citizenry of their member nations, to humanity as a whole, as well as to the individual people who make up this world, and to the principles of human rights. If this pattern I outlined for you is not checked sometime within the 21st century, we'll be paying the price for it in the centuries to come. "Brave New World" anyone? ...>
Based on what's happening right now & material from the past 10 or 15 years ... what are your own predictions for humanity's future in this world based on the following concepts? . . .(consumerism, the cloning controversy, media manipulation/social control, big business mergers, gov't intelligence agencies, and unaccountable state leadership in the USA and abroad --> i.e, leaders not accountable to their own people, the international community, humanitarian decency, and so on ... )
<The cloning issue is a "big" problem. One way of making sure it doesn't become a "bigger" problem is to make sure that the issue isn't taken out of the public eye to be dealt with behind closed doors by corporations. The information & the property rights to genetic information must be held in the public domain. Scientists and ethicists must keep talking about this matter, hammering out the moral boundaries of the issue to corportations so that they are quite clear in their responsibilities. The possibility for abuses must be curbed before they have a chance to become abuses. Finally, international organizations, multinat. corps, and states need a watchdog - accountable ultimately to common people. That watchdog is the Independent Media. It has its problems to be sure, but with some work, it can be an effective tool for guarding against many of these abuses on the international scene. Through its vigilance and our vigilance as academics it can be used to ward off the dystopias of 1984 and Brave New World.>
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