Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Remove Finland from the European Union


I don’t know about the rest of you but I am increasingly sick and tired of the recent carry on of the Finns. I have tried my best to hold my tongue, but I cannot in good conscience keep silent any longer. The treacherous Finns have been causing trouble all over the place. They have even been suggesting that Greece should be kicked out of the euro. Well, I say: kick Finland out of the euro. Finland is barely even a country. It is just a mobile phone company with a few saunas. So let’s see how many mobile phones they can sell when their new currency appreciates by 5 million percent against every other currency. And Nokia is screwed now anyway since they do not make good smart phones. These arrogant Finns need to be taken down a peg or two. Give the so-called “True Finns” what they want and then let’s see how they get on.

Have you ever met a Finn that you liked? Think about it. Seriously. Think hard. Have you ever met a Finn full stop? The other Scandinavians do not even regard Finland as part of Scandinavia. The Finnish language is of uncertain provenance. Where did this mongrel dialect come from? Nobody knows. Are the Finns really even Europeans? Give the Finns back to Russia and see how they like it.

Ever since Lordy won the Eurovision Song Contest the whole tone of that event has lowered to the point now where it can no longer be taken seriously as a music competition. I blame the Finns. The rot started with them.

In the long run what has Finland got to offer Europe? In this definitive list of 66 beautiful towns of Europe, not a single Finnish town appears. What has Finland contributed to European culture? The composer Sibelius, we are frequently told. If I had a euro for every time I have heard a Finn drone on about the “genius of Sibelius” I would be a rich man. But ask yourself this: if Sibelius is really such a great composer, then why have you and I never heard any of his music?

Who has given more to European civilisation, Greece or Finland? Well, for starters, Greece INVENTED European Civilisation. If Greece had never existed, there would be no Europe; if Finland had never existed, no one in Europe would notice its absence.

The overweening Finns have been demanding collateral for the money they are lending Greece in the bailout. Oh puh-lease! If it wasn’t for the likes of Greece, the Finns would have had no one to sell their surplus mobile phones to in the first place. It’s not Greece’s fault that there is nothing to do in Finland except work really hard making lots of mobile phones to sell to Greece. Nor is it Greece’s fault that there are plenty of fun things to do in sunny Greece that make it seem less necessary to spend all of your time working hard to make mobile phones – especially when you can just get the Finns to do it for you and then buy them with money that you have, in effect, “borrowed” from the Finns with no intention of paying back. Why would the Greeks need to work when they can have such a good time lying on the beaches of beautiful islands or having a riot in Athens? The Finns are basically jealous.

Enough! It was not always like this. In years past, Finland was a country you could respect. It was a country you could believe in. It was a land of hopes and dreams. Who can forget the immortal Monthy Python song eulogising Finland?

Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
It's the country for me.

You're so near to Russia,
So far from Japan,
Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam.

You're so sadly neglected
And often ignored,
A poor second to Belgium,
When going abroad.

Would Monthy Python take the trouble to write such a complimentary song about Finland now, given that country’s recent disgraceful performance?

I doubt it.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Occupying Wall Street – a New Birth of Freedom?





Previously we discussed the progressive protests and revolutions that are breaking out all over the world and terrifying the hell out of people with power and in positions of authority. One place where such progressive protests and revolutions appeared to be strangely absent was in the United States of America. At the time I thought this might be due to the uniquely docile and obedient nature of the American populace. Well, it turns out that this was just anti-American racism on my part. At the end of the day Americans are just like the rest of us – as is shown by the current Occupation of Wall Street. The protestors may not succeed in conquering Wall Street this time and the occupation may fizzle out, although thus far it appears to be gaining momentum. But if not today, then one day the people will rise up and conquer Wall Street - and history will remember the current protestors as heroes.




In an important way, this attempted revolution in Wall Street is the Big One, in the sense that it is going straight to the heart of the matter – to the epicentre of “the markets”. If it gains traction you would be surprised at just how fragile the current system is, and at just how quickly it could fall to pieces - it is an ideological construct based on a series of myths and fantasies, so it could easily collapse like a house of cards.



Today, we fear and obey “the markets” in the same way that we used to fear and obey God. “The market” is this weird abstract entity that everyone lives in terror of, even though no one has ever seen it – just like God used to be - omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. Everything must be done in order to appease and satisfy “the markets”, just as things previously needed to be done in order to satisfy and appease God. Our leaders act in order to try and calm the rage of “the markets” in the same way that they used to act to try and calm the rage of God. We must not raise taxes on the wealthy, not because God would disapprove, but because “the markets” would disapprove. We must reduce government expenditure, not because God will throw a hissy-fit if we don’t, but because “the markets” will throw a hissy-fit if we don’t. We must reduce the amount we spend on health and education not because God demands it, but because “the markets” demand it. The poor and the vulnerable must be sacrificed because “the markets” demand it, just as previously the poor and the vulnerable needed to be sacrificed because the gods demanded it.



Of course, in previous eras the power of God did not actually come from God himself, but from people’s belief in the power of God. The same is true of “the market” – its power over us comes, not from the market itself, but from our belief in its power and its omnipotence – and from the belief that this power is inevitable and immutable. “The market” is like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz – if we saw it for what it really is, it would no longer wield its power and people would see that things do not have to be like this. “The markets” can only do what they do because the laws allow them to get away with it – ultimately, because we allow them to get away with it. If Wall Street is to be successfully torn down then first we must tear down the walls in people’s minds that prevent them seeing that things do not have to be like this.



Of course, no one who can think still believes in Capitalist propaganda. Does anyone think financiers deserve the money they get? Only the severely brainwashed still really believe this, because we have all seen financiers being bailed out by the taxpayer and have seen them protected and molly-coddled by the nanny-state. We have seen how our system of socialism for the rich involves vast forced transfers of wealth from the less well off to the better off. People have now stopped believing in this stupid system. And once people stop believing in a system it cannot long endure – it is already dead. The pent up anger and rage of the people towards the system is now literally immense.



Can you hear the fear in the voices of the apologists for power and wealth as they desperately try to fool you into believing their lies and their propaganda? They don’t even believe it themselves. They die with their conceits, and only piteous scorn upon their folly waits.

Who's Afraid of the Internet?



Who is afraid of the Information Revolution? Who is afraid of the Internet?

People who work in media and publishing hate and fear the internet and the Information Revolution. So do politicians. And government armies and the police. It terrifies them. What about doctors? They hate it and despise it – or if not quite yet, they soon will. Lawyers? The same. What about IT professionals? Surely they must be happy about it? Nope. Even people who work in IT hate and fear the information revolution because each new major development renders most of their jobs redundant. So the answer to the question “Who is afraid of the Information Revolution?” would appear to be: everyone. Everyone is afraid of the information revolution. Or at least, everyone who makes their living and who gets their power from controlling access to information.

The absolute material wealth and well-being of the human species has increased hugely over the last couple of centuries because more work has been done by machines, robots and computers. Also, the quality and quantity of information available to people has increased and improved, thus allowing them to act more rationally and more effectively. Life-expectancies have increased, infant mortality has decreased, literacy has rocketed. Not only that, the world has become a much, much safer and more civilised place. The oppression of women, ethnic minorities and homosexuals has decreased and become less and less acceptable. Violence has decreased. Basically, for most people things have been getting better and better in every way. Technological development (particularly since the Industrial Revolution) has allowed us to largely abolish slavery and serfdom and replace them with wage-slavery (or “employment”). The onset of the recent Information Revolution will transform our societies just as dramatically, but as yet most people are only dimly aware of just how dramatic this transformation will be.

For example, as indicated above, professional employment is increasingly going to become a thing of the past. Computers and robots will render most “professional” jobs more-and-more irrelevant. Most of the following professionals will no longer be needed very much and you will not need to pay much or anything for their services even if you do ever want them: surgeons, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, lawyers, judges, professors, journalists, architects, engineers, bankers, stockbrokers, financial advisors, accountants, tax consultants, bureaucrats, intelligence agents, managers, salespeople - as well as information technology professionals. Even at the moment, most professionals spend most of their “working” day surfing the internet, pretending to work, drinking coffee, and going to lunch, simply because there is actually very little for them to do (everyone, that is, except me, since I work incredibly hard myself). And they only get paid what they do because artificial barriers to entry allow them to enjoy monopoly power for the moment. Eventually, this farce will end and the barriers will be torn down. So if your self-respect depends on the status and money you hope to get from paid professional employment then be afraid. Be very afraid. On the other hand, if you are a nice person who is fun to be with then there is no need to be afraid of the Information Revolution – you will have high status in the new world that is coming.

MAny people are fretting about the increase in unemployment due to the recent recessions. But they are looking at this problem from the wrong perspective. Unemployment is only a problem because people’s status in society is currently determined by their job. That may have been feasible in the world of the Industrial Revolution. It is utterly unfeasible in the world of the Information Revolution. The best way to get rid of unemployment is actually to get rid of employment. Employment is a new concept. Until the industrial revolution the concepts of employment and “jobs” scarcely existed. We only imagine this to be the natural order because that is all we have experienced. But it wasn’t like that in the past and it will not be like that in the future.

Currently, the biggest determinant of a person’s status in society is their employment or job. Success in employment chiefly indicates two things about a person
a) a capacity to endure boredom and
b) an ability to suck up to people who are responsible for your “success”.
Why either of these abilities should determine a person’s status in society is beyond me. Nevertheless, that has been the case for some time. Anyway, that will all change now – your status in society will increasingly depend on your moral qualities and your social qualities i.e. it will depend on how nice you are and on how creative and fun you are to be around. That is why the mediocre people who currently thrive in the tedious world of professional employment are so terrified of the Information Revolution.

Personally, I am looking forward immensely to the annihilation of employment and an end to wage-slavery. We managed to get rid of slavery and serfdom. Now for the next (and perhaps final) revolution: the elimination of wage-slavery and employment.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker knocks it out of the park ... again. Is he the most intelligent human being alive? You decide.

http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker

Monday, August 29, 2011

Religion in the Modern World






Many if not most human beings have a profound and ineradicable yearning to be part of a genuine, officially sanctioned spiritual and religious community with shared rituals, customs and beliefs. These shared rituals need to be something that all the Community and all the Family participate in during the most important life-ceremonies surrounding birth, coming-of-age, marriage and death. This gives meaning and structure to people’s lives and gives them a sense of stability and belonging. People bound together like this feel grounded and they do not feel like isolated atoms. Today, this yearning is not easily satisfied in modern, individualistic societies. Consider the temples, cathedrals and mosques at the centre of ancient cities – these buildings were the visible expression of the collective hope and shared spiritual outlook of the people who lived there. The people who lived in these cities were part of real communities; but the people who live in our fractured and fragmented modern cities are not part of genuine communities – they are isolated atoms, at best clinging together in small, degraded cults. At the centres of our old cities, the temples existed beside the market-places – the temples testified to a higher human need than those of just the market place. But in our new modern cities there are only markets at the centre.

In the modern world there is a kind of spiritual anarchy that leaves people at a loose end. People drift around from cult to cult, feeling vaguely lost. There is no officially sanctioned purpose or structure to life – people have to try and find their own meaning as best they can, and more often than not they fail to get very far with this. If every individual goes off and finds the cult that he likes best, then how can that provide a shared space where Communities and Families can act as one and experience being a unity? The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Why did this happen? Why was religion, so to speak, banished from the central square of human cities? How and why did this change come about? It happened because of the Modern or Enlightenment notion of the separation of “church” and “state” – the separation of religion from politics. The Enlightenment guarantees freedom of religious worship. The point of this project was to end religious intolerance, persecution and wars. Because of this, in Modern countries religion became a purely private matter – no particular religion can lay any public claim to the centre of our cities. Every religion has equal rights and none has a special claim. This freedom of religious worship is at the heart of modern societies. This arrangement has its benefits but it also has its problems (as outlined above). Is there any way around these problems? What, if anything can be done about this?

The traditional organised religions are now dead or implausible to many – their rigid and dated doctrines often no longer suffice. There is no returning to their special, privileged status at the heart of the city, especially in our diverse, globalised, scientific societies. A multiplicity of established religions in different countries with competing claims also sets up lethal tribal and religious conflicts between various peoples which we can no longer afford. There is no going back. But trying to replace the old religions with “new religions” works even worse – such manufactured cults are contrived and ridiculous (at best, they are the religious equivalent of Esperanto) and have even less claim to be at the heart of the city. So what to do?

The answer to the problem is quite simple in my view – the established, officially-sanctioned religion of modern society needs to be based on tradition, and not invented from scratch, and it needs to include the teachings of all the greatest and most influential prophets of human history. If this was done correctly it would not be superficial or artificial. The Scripture of this religion would be a compendium of the teachings and stories of the greatest prophets and educators of human history – Confucius, Laozi, Buddha, Mahavira, Socrates, Jesus, Muhammad and perhaps some others. Think what a wonderful book that would be! The most wonderful book in the world, containing the best of all that has been thought and said by the wisest most influential figures of human history. Beautiful, magnificent temples would be built in the centre of each city where everyone would go to worship and meditate together, get married, name their babies, be buried, and also learn the teachings of the great and wise prophets. This official religion needs to be a system of thought and stories with beliefs spanning monotheism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism, monism, atheism, agnosticism, gnosticism and others. In other words, the established religion of all countries needs to be a modified and much expanded form of something like Hinduism, because Hinduism is like that. Nobody can claim that a religion with doctrines as diverse and tolerant as the one I have described above is impossible, for the simple reason that Hinduism IS such a religion, and it works, and its tradition is older and more enduring than that of any of the other existing great religions. In Hinduism there is no one principle founder or prophet, but a whole series of them, all co-existing. There is no fixed dogma, but a whole range of beliefs and traditions putting forward their claims from under the same umbrella. The religion for our globalised world needs to be something like this, but it needs to fully incorporate the teachings of the other great religions as well.

Some people might worry that such a religion would be an incoherent jumble of all the existing religions, slightly modified. I merely reply: ALL of our existing great organised religions are already merely a jumble of numerous already existing religions, slightly modified. Christianity manages to incorporate the prophets and teachings of Judaism even though the two might appear to be in conflict. The Bible itself is the ultimate cobbled-together, incoherent jumble of a book. Islam manages to incorporate the prophets and teachings of both Judaism and Christianity even though they might appear to be in conflict. As already noted, Hinduism manages to incorporate a huge amount of apparently conflicting ideas and traditions from a massive pile of diverse teachers. The Chinese managed to synthesize Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The Japanese managed to synthesize Shintoism and Buddhism. In point of fact, all the great “traditional” religions are syntheses of other religions that evolved over time - they built on the best of the past and modified it as necessary.

On the farm of one of my in-laws down in Longford in Ireland there is a six thousand year old dolmen. Every Winter Solstice I dance around it naked, festooned with wild flowers, to honour the gods of my forefathers. This dolmen stood in that field for thousands of years before that arriviste St. Patrick came to Ireland and introduced the teachings of Jesus to our small yet great nation. The pre-Christian world-view of pagan Ireland never completely died out, and still exists deep in Irish hearts, along with the Christian world-view. The Celtic Cross is the visible expression of this synthesis of the Pagan and the Christian in the Irish spirit – the Celtic Cross marries the principle symbol of Christianity with the pagan symbols of pre-Christian Ireland. The point is this: we Irish are both traditionally Pagans and traditionally Christians. The same is true of much or even all of Europe. Traditional European religious rituals and beliefs ARE a synthesis. Christmas, the most popular Christian holiday, comes from Yuletide, a pre-Christian pagan winter festival. Spiritual synthesis can and does happen in all sorts of contexts when it needs to happen, and it enriches all traditions when it does so. It happened in the past and it can happen again now and in the future. Our globalised world needs a new religious arrangement. It may take a few hundred years for the religious arrangement outlined above to come into existence, but (in my view at least) it needs to happen.





Monday, August 22, 2011

The UK riots and the Speeding Up of History


The standard line of the official English-speaking media is that the riots in the UK were fundamentally different from the democratic protests we have been seeing in, for example, the Middle East. The English rioters, we are told, were a bunch of criminal, non-political, inarticulate nihilists who just wanted to steal things. That, of course, is exactly what the official media in the Middle East say about protesters there. Revolutions everywhere consist of large groups of poor people who want to “steal” things (i.e. who want to take wealth off the rich and redistribute it to the less well-off). Fundamentally, the English riots were no different in this respect. If the state is not prepared to redistribute wealth then other methods have to be found. The English rioters were deemed “criminals” but the theft involved was much, much less than the theft perpetrated by the financial industry on England over the past decade. In a way, the riots were a response to that. They are a response to the fundamental injustice of the current system that people live under. People have an understanding of what is really going on that was not previously there. If those with power and wealth behave like a bunch of criminal thugs then why should poor people behave any differently?


So the riots in England were just another manifestation of a growing phenomenon we are seeing nearly everywhere in the world. We are seeing massive protests in Israel, as well as in India, China, and the Arab Middle East. We are also seeing them in Spain and Greece. Latin America has practically undergone a collective revolution with leftist governments taking power, redistributing wealth, and uniting in order to end US control over their continent.


Why are all these things happening now and with increasing frequency? The answer is fairly obvious and commonly understood: the Information Revolution is speeding up history even more and creating the conditions for an outbreak of authentic democracy and progressive forces nearly everywhere around the globe. The ability of the existing power-class to control information (and thereby society) is being destroyed by the internet, by Twitter, by Facebook, by Youtube, by email.


There was a time when any tin pot dictator could destroy an entire town, murdering everyone in it, and hardly anybody would know about it. Now, if the dictator does that, the images are all over youtube in a matter of minutes, and the public outrage is unmanageable.


This change does not just apply to tin pot dictators in minor countries but to traditionally powerful institutions like the US military as well. Until quite recently, the US military could behave basically as it wished in the developing world, and nobody either there or in the West would know much about it. Now if the US military, for example, kills some civilians in Iraq, it is beamed relentlessly into every living room in the Middle East with access to the internet or to satellite TV. This is part of what made the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so prohibitively difficult and expensive for the US. The game has changed, and changed RADICALLY.


The situation in China is particularly interesting. Over the last couple of decades there we have witnessed the biggest move of people in history out of poverty. If China wants to be a world power, then it needs wealth, and if it wants wealth it needs an educated middle class. Educated middle classes do not tolerate being censored by governments, and the power of the Chinese government to control information is eroding fast. This is leading to a dramatic increase in the REAL freedom of the Chinese people.


In the 15th century the discovery of the printing press in Europe lead to a huge increase in democracy, wealth and freedom, as the old power-order of priests, monarchies and aristocrats was overthrown. Slavery was abolished, human rights were established, women were liberated. Unimaginable events that had never happened in human history happened for the first time. The ability of the then existing power-class to control information (and thereby society) was destroyed by the printing press. This took a couple of hundred years. Now what we are seeing is history speeding up even more. The power of the rulers to control information and society is eroding at such a rapid pace that all sorts of amazing things are likely to happen, not just in a matter of centuries, but in a matter of decades, years, weeks, days, hours and minutes.


Those who currently have power will tremble with fear, and shriek that the world is falling down around our heads and descending into uncontrolled anarchy. And life for most people will improve immeasurably, in ways that were previously unimaginable.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

How to solve the so-called “Euro-crisis” (and also save Western Civilisation as we know it)

Here is how to solve the so-called “euro-crisis”: Allow the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to borrow from the European Central Bank. The loans made to eurozone states by the EFSF, and the conditions attached to them, would then have to be unanimously agreed by all the eurozone governments. By doing this, the EFSF would be a vehicle for creating "eurobonds", but Germany would have effective control over the process.

This would solve the “euro-crisis” in a stroke, and could even save the Western world from continued decline. The plan would have the following characteristics:

1 - The plan would remove the “markets” from the equation. What are the "markets"? The "market" consists of a handful of individuals in a handful of private financial institutions who decide where to put the money they have at their disposal. This handful of individuals has no democratic accountability to anyone. They lend money to governments. Where do they get the money that they lend to governments? Some of it comes from deposits, but most of it is borrowed from Central Banks, at a lower interest rate than that at which they then lend it on to governments. This is how they make their profits. They are useless intermediaries who don't do anything except cause trouble when they start demanding extortionate interest rates from the governments to which they are lending. So they need to be removed from the equation. If the ECB could lend to the EFSF and then the EFSF lent to governments, it would simply remove the useless parasitic "markets" from the equation.

(Btw, if you are wondering where the Central Banks get the money they lend to the private banks – the answer is: they create it out of thin air, by pushing a couple of buttons on a computer somewhere).

2 - The plan would give Germany effective control over the fiscal policies of feckless eurozone states. How much is lent by the EFSF and at what rate, would need to be unanimously agreed by all the eurozone governments – thus giving Germany the required veto. What the loans are to be spent on, and the plan for how they are to be paid back, would also require unanimity. This would ensure that the fund is not abused by feckless states. In effect, any member state that wanted to use the fund would have to hand over a substantial part of their fiscal policy decisions to the other member states. If they don't want to do that, then they don't need to use the EFSF - they can just go to the "markets" (which will still exist) and borrow off them instead. But if they are frozen out from the markets, they would need to have the agreement of the other eurozone member states as to their fiscal policy - this would create a de facto fiscal union in the EU.

3 - At the moment the ECB cannot lend directly to governments, because of the danger that it would print loads of money and cause hyperinflation. Under the above plan, the ECB would not be lending to governments but to the transnational institution of the EFSF, which could only act if there is unanimous agreement between the 17 eurozone governments. Again, the responsible member states could just block anything they didn't like.

4 - The ECB would retain complete control over eurozone interest rates - it would decide at what rate it would loan to the EFSF. Thus, the independence of the ECB would not be at all compromised.

5 - Using the EFSF would probably not require a treaty change - the plan could be implemented quickly. It would not require creating any new European institutions since the two institutions involved (the ECB and the EFSF) already exist.