Where do we go from here: 5

Political leadership

I have held forth, in the previous three posts, about the problems facing human societies in terms of conflict, our economic systems, human populations and food supplies, condensing into a few paragraphs discussion of issues that fill books and newspapers and magazine articles and blogs and endless media hours. Virtually every point I have made could be (and no doubt is) elaborated, developed and argued in all those media, but hopefully my condensed version will provide the basis for some constructive thoughts. But, whatever the arguments, the solution to all the problems considered must lie in political action, in decisions made by governments with the capacity to influence – or determine - the way societies function and the resources of countries are used.

Politics is the business of politicians who, in democracies, are elected by the people. There are all sorts of other political systems, some of which are not particularly salubrious, but let’s confine our attention to democracies and the role of democratically elected leaders. These people are vital to the success of their societies, by which I mean success in terms of the well-being of the whole population, and in terms of the natural environment. If that is destroyed, or even significantly degraded, the society can’t be considered successful and amount of economic effort and activity will serve to maintain living standards.

Most people in western countries are convinced that our systems of democratic government are as good as it gets – the apogee of political evolution.  But a vanishingly small number of our elected politicians are real leaders; for the most part they are public relations puppets, driven by polls that indicate to them what their constituencies want, regardless of the fact that most of the people who make up those constituencies are themselves driven by self-interest and the standard delusions about economics. A majority of people want ‘the good life’ – the houses and cars and consumer goods and holidays and entertainment – without wanting to consider the real costs. So society gets ever more ‘precious’, with endless whingeing about minor inconveniences, about price rises or the unavailability of things that there’s no good reason we should have, with controversies about trivia and the expenditure of huge amounts of effort and emotion arguing about things like the behaviour celebrities or matters that shouldn’t be in the public domain at all – like whether homosexual couples should be allowed to marry. And the brand of ugly adversarial politics that we currently have in western countries doesn’t help.

So we probably get the political leaders we deserve. It would be wonderful if, at least occasionally, we got people standing for election who have clear and definite (and constructive) vision and who are prepared to pursue that vision regardless of the opinion polls and focus group findings and the pressure and bribes of lobbyists funded by powerful interest groups. Of course the way the political game is played now, people of vision and high principle probably wouldn’t get elected or, if they did, in a system like Australia’s where politics and parliament are dominated by political parties, the party machines would make sure they were kept under control, so they wouldn’t get much done. There is also the  problem that, quite frequently, people with vision and ‘fire in the belly’ are nutcases – think of the great leaders of the 20^th century, like Hitler or Mao Tse Tung or Stalin (hardly democratic leaders!). Even Churchill had some pretty peculiar ideas. In Australia Whitlam had ‘fire in the belly’ – and didn’t last long, but Bob Hawke, though a politician to his bootstraps, was undoubtedly a leader with convictions, and he did last. In Canada Pierre Trudeau, who led that country from 1968 to 1984 (with a brief interlude when he was out of power) was, by all reports, a man of vision and principle. But looking across the political landscape of the world right now, I don’t see anyone, in any country, who inspires much genuine respect and admiration. Obama looked hopeful – I think he is a person of high principles – but he hasn’t managed to struggle free of the constraints imposed by a completely negative, indeed destructive, Republican party that exploits the prejudices and ignorance of large chunks of the American electorate, and by the financial crisis brought on by the greed of the Wall Street traders etc. etc. The world is awash with words about it all.  All we can do is live in hope, but I’m not holding my breath.

I set out, when I started to write these things, to try to imagine how the world’s problems might be fixed, but I have ended with the conclusion, basically, that it’s not going to happen. Life in the rich, developed countries will go on apparently much as before for some time to come. Money and power and technology will (probably) insulate the populations of those countries from a great deal of unpleasantness for years to come. There will wars and rumours of wars and gradually accumulating environmental problems (I haven’t even mentioned climate change) and some nasty famines in faraway places. Well-meaning, and in many cases extraordinarily admirable, people will work hard to alleviate the problems, and in some cases and some places they will make progress, but overall we will not change our ways. Humanity is in trouble: the world we leave to our grandchildren is going to be a lot less pleasant than the one we live in now, unless they have so much money that they can totally insulate themselves from it all. All that isn’t very cheerful, but maybe my prognostications will be as wide of the mark as those of Nostradamus. Good luck; enjoy your life.

Where do we go from here: 4

People and food

No danger of starving here: Christmas in Australia

 
































My third major point (in the first of these posts) was concern about the rapidly-growing human population of the world and whether it was going to be able to feed itself. There are a couple of points in relation to this that need to be kept in mind: one is that most of the population growth is happening in poor countries that are already over-crowded; the other is that most people in the western countries eat too much. The major food problem in these is obesity. In general, they produce ample food for themselves, with enough for export. The difficulties at the moment arise from the logistics of distribution, and the economics of paying for and transporting large amounts of food from areas of plenty to areas of shortage. Right now, for the world as a whole, if food could be distributed rapidly and effectively from the high producing areas to those in need, there would be enough for everyone, not to eat as the privileged do, but to eat adequately, at least pro tem. But it’s unlikely that this will remain the case as populations continue to soar. In the not-too-distant future there is not going to be enough food to feed everyone.

There are blinkered technofreaks who maintain that, since Malthus warned in the late 18^th century of the problems that would be caused by ever-increasing human populations, technical solutions have always been found that have resulted in enough food being produced. This has been true up to now, but there are now new factors in the equation which mean that the argument is not going to hold for the future. One of these – which I wont go on about but which is very important for millions of people – is the world-wide crash in the populations of ocean fish, hunted to near extinction in many areas. But most food still comes from the land, and not only is virtually all the land suitable for arable agriculture already in use but, as I noted earlier, much of that land has been degraded: soil fertility is falling as a result of unsustainable farming practices, and soil erosion is taking a terrible toll. Maintaining high crop yields in modern, extensive agricultural systems involves the use of huge amounts of oil for the manufacture of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers as well as directly for tractor power. We could make great progress if we were prepared to accept much more labour-intensive production systems, and eat a great deal less meat – producing livestock is a highly  inefficient way of converting plant material into food for humans. But as countries like China and India develop, their people are demanding better diets with increasing amounts of meat, so significantly changing market demand for food. And, of course, those countries have burgeoning human populations.

There are solutions – or partial solutions – which, if they can’t entirely solve the problems could improve matters enormously, particularly for the poor of the world. These involve technology, which includes better fertilization, the recycling of plant nutrients, more efficient use of water and animal manures, huge reductions in waste of food and the losses that affect peasant farmers so badly, pest control and plant breeding. Soil erosion and degradation are major problems across Africa, much of Asia and South America; these must be addressed. (There are also serious soil erosion problems in the United States.) The big problem in relation to the poorer, high population countries where the food problem is frequently severe and likely to get worse, is getting the knowledge and technology to the people who need them – a matter of education and resources. And who will pay for the resources needed? In the western countries, where there is no sign of food shortages, there could be huge environmental benefits from waste reduction. Heavy subsidies that encourage the conversion of maize into biofuels cause major distortions in production patterns and food prices and should be abandoned. It would also be good to see moves away from the horrible high-intensity systems of producing chickens and eggs, beef and pork. These are driven more by economics than fundamental necessity.

Is all this going to happen? Well, I don’t think so. Globally, food shortages are going to get worse and will contribute to the increasing pressures on the people of high population countries to emigrate to those where they can expect a better standard of living. There are already serious problems in this respect – every time there’s some sort of crisis they get worse – and they are not going to go away. They may not lead directly to war, but they will lead to ever-stronger calls for restrictive border policies, over-riding humanitarian considerations. The only way to avoid that would seem to be for the rich countries to put ever-increasing effort and resources into improving life in the poor ones in all the obvious areas like education, sanitation and hygiene, food production and (sustainable) transport systems. Whether they will do that is doubtful. Developed countries say they aim to allocate 0.7% of their Gross Domestic Product to aid to underdeveloped countries, but very few do so. There is a strong human tendency to postpone action on inconvenient matters as long as possible, particularly if there is significant uncertainty about the problem facing us and if we ourselves are somewhat insulated against the consequences of the postponement. The rich countries, in general can insulate themselves against food shortages, tighten border controls against the indigent masses and maintain reasonable standards of living. But in the poor, high population countries life will get progressively worse and there will be increasing starvation over the next 25 years. And in the process the natural environment will be destroyed.

Where do we go from here: 3

Economics

This is post number 3 in my little series; you need to read the first two for the background to this one.

Turning to economics, I made the comment that, at least in the so-called advanced western countries, continuous economic growth is assumed to be the normal and necessary condition for modern societies if they are to thrive. There are some incipient problems in terms of the stability of financial systems because of trade imbalances and of the stability of our economic system because of its dependence on oil, which is starting to run short and will get progressively more expensive.

Whether the financial market system is stable is arguable. I said (going boldly where angels fear to tread!) that there has to be a high probability that it’s not. There are innumerable articles, and a number of erudite and economically sophisticated books about the 2008 market crash, and I have no intention of getting into any detail about all that, except to say that the point that emerges most strongly is that the crash was caused by the greed and hubris of Wall Street traders and bankers, and the lack of any effective regulation of the market. All that is still there, but my assertion is based on general considerations, like the increasing prices of oil and food, the trade imbalances between China and the United States and the fundamentally fragile nature of our economic systems dependent, as they are, on continual growth, fuelled by the manufacture and marketing of endless junk and by service industries that, in many cases, depend heavily on tourism. (What happens to them when the oil runs out?)

At the level of the economics of individual countries, the principle of non-interference that I mentioned earlier can be extended to the use of economic as well as military power by strong nations or large multinational companies. Economic power could, conceptually, be used by powerful countries or companies to the benefit of the weak, rather than as a tool of exploitation. There is a history of commercial exploitation of weak or undeveloped nations by such companies, for example exploitation of oilfields in Nigeria and (until their nationalisation by President Chávez), Venezuela. Demand by rich countries causes distortions in the production patterns and economies of small ones which, desperate to earn foreign exchange, may focus their agriculture on cash crops, often produced by foreign companies using extensive production methods so that the benefits to local societies are minimal. We may also see the destruction of ecosystems brought about, for example, by destructive logging of tropical forests for hardwoods by countries like Japan and South Korea, with no interest in the forests themselves, or the conversion of large tracts of tropical forest into soy-bean (in the Amazon) or oil palm (in Indonesia) production.

Not the kind of house most of us want? A 'hotel' in Ecuadorian cloud forest

Both diplomacy and business should be guided by principles analogous to the philosophical idea of utilitarianism: every action must be assessed in terms of its impact on those affected by it. So, in an ideal world, countries should negotiate not only to maximize their own benefits, but also those of others involved. Business should take account of the well-being of anyone affected by its activities, and organize itself to optimize that well-being, as far as possible, taking into account the capacity of the people concerned to benefit from the projected actions. The principles that should be followed are obvious and could clearly be developed at length. The problem is implementation of those principles.

It’s easy to make disparaging remarks about economics and the boring focus on it that we have to endure in the news media and from the commentariat. But even the greenest, ‘back-to-nature’ ideology has to accept that economics are very important. They reflect, and provide a measure of, our material well-being so we’re bound to be interested in them. The problem is partly one of emphasis: the news media – certainly in Australia, which is notorious for this – focus obsessively on economic news, so that almost every event is interpreted in terms of what it will cost, or be worth. Our obsession with economics has the result that decisions are frequently made, or at least assessed, in economic terms, which can distort real values. For example, state governments will, almost invariably, yield to pressure from miners and developers to allow things like open cut coal mining, or underground gas  extraction in agricultural areas, regardless of the environmental damage that may result; they put resources into ever-more roads – with ever-more big trucks – and shut down rail routes that are ‘uneconomic’; they bow to the wishes of the off-shore fishing industry not to declare ‘no catch’ zones in the sea to allow fish populations to recover.  Current attempts to solve the urgent and serious problems afflicting Australia’s major water catchments – the Murray-Darling Basin – are being undermined by hysterical assertions that reduction in water allocations for irrigation will destroy communities. They won’t, but rational, science-based debate isn’t getting much of a hearing. And the idea of a (federal) tax on carbon to ensure that the polluter pays generates such screams of protest that you would think the businesses affected were going to be destroyed. All anyone has to do is cry ‘jobs’ and/or ‘the bottom line’ and the pollies fall over themselves to implement the short-term fixes, generally ignoring long-term  environmental implications. Of course people need jobs, and of course human societies are not going to tolerate focus on the environment to their own detriment and disadvantage, but we need some balance. In the long term, if humans are going to survive and live decent, pleasant lives, we have to do better than we are now.

To actually fix things in our societies we have to accept some short-term pain: we have to pay for the research needed to bring alternative energy sources on-line;  we have to pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; we have to walk away from our love affair with petrol or diesel-driven cars, and move over to electric vehicles or vehicles powered by fuel cells (still electricity, but different from batteries); we have to subsidise solar panels on roofs to provide some part of household power requirements, and legislate to ensure power savings and efficiency in buildings. We have to develop efficient water distribution infrastructure and accept the need to use water more efficiently. In Australia we have to get over our irrational paranoia about nuclear power, and get started building the reactors. We also have to cut back enormously on our profligate waste of resources and energy, and massively increase recycling and re-use of paper, plastics, glass, domestic waste and water (there was all sorts of hysterical nonsense about that a few years ago, and we don’t do much of it). All this – and all the other stuff of the same type that I haven’t mentioned – might cost in the short-term, but in the long term it will contribute to a more sustainable life style and reduced resource use. And, heresy of heresies, we will have to reduce our standards of living. That doesn’t mean we all revert to the level that millions of poor people have to tolerate because they have no option, but it does mean some quite radical changes.

We have to do something about the paradox caused by increasing automation of all sorts of activities and processes. Technical developments increasingly reduce the need for labour, but we have increasing numbers of people who need jobs to provide the money they need to live. So it’s difficult to see that things can go on as they are now. People in developed countries are addicted to stuff, things – a huge range of goods of every description, most of which are of limited use or real value. But the manufacture and marketing of all that stuff keeps people in jobs and provides them with incomes; those activities keep economies growing, and without growth the system grinds to a halt. We frequently hear the health of the economy assessed in terms of consumer spending. This is bizarre, but what’s the answer? If we all buy less stuff, the economy slows, businesses close, people lose their jobs, and the whole process triggers a downward (in economic terms) cycle. But that’s what is going to happen. Somewhere along the line the economic structure of societies has to change, but how this will happen, and what form it will take, is impossible (for me anyway) to say.

One thing seems certain: the blind irrational faith in untrammeled free markets as the solution to all problems has to be abandoned. Markets fail, as the recent financial crisis demonstrated, and will continue to fail in the absence of regulation to control greed and the exploitation of the weak and vulnerable. The consequences of this can be seen in the large and growing disparity between the incomes of bankers and financiers, successful stock market speculators and the CEOs of big business, and most of the rest of the population. These disparities are particularly marked in the US but are developing in rapidly in Britain, Australia and (although I have not seen data), probably Canada. The solution to the problem must lie, at least conceptually, with more regulation, although this is anathema to the free market fundamentalists. In America free markets are equated to individual freedom: government intervention is totally unacceptable. But we need regulation by enlightened governments to control the greed, exploitation of people and the environment and all the other excesses of capitalism. We need, dare I say it, more socialistic systems.

I can hear the screams of protest and abuse: this is back to communism (which failed); it will inhibit initiative, and (guess what) financial growth. And so on. There’s no point here in digressing into details of how it might work, or drafting answers to the arguments and protests that would follow if this idea was taken up by anyone in a position of influence. The point is that change is necessary. It may not take the form of systems that have been used in the past but it could, in principle, be achieved by enlightened political leadership and government, coupled to good will in the community. There’s no way the whole system could be changed immediately; change would have to be a step-by-step evolutionary process aimed at optimising the lives of people AND outcomes for the environment. Optimisation in terms of the well-being of people and the environment will mean having evaluation systems in place to assess how policies are working, and being prepared to change when necessary. Economic change can’t be divorced from political change; politicians would have to be driven less by ideology and more by pragmatism. The guiding principle would have to be the need to get the system right in terms of the well-being of people and the environment. Unfortunately, at the present time, the whole world is  hooked on western life-styles and economic paradigms there doesn’t seem to be much chance that radical changes are likely to happen any time soon.

There’s not much point in going on about all this. None of it’s new; people like David Suzuki have been saying these things, eloquently and in detail, for years. Books have been written, impassioned speeches made. But the human race has a high inertia and a strong tendency to self-indulgence. We also have, in most countries (I’m tempted to say ‘all countries’, but hopefully that would not be true), pretty low-grade politicians, which matters because a lot of what needs to happen has to happen at the political level. We need visionary, open-minded leadership and constructive legislation.

Where do we go from here: 2

Could we solve our problems?

In the first blog of this series I made a quick assessment of some of the problems facing the modern world: can we live in peace; will our economic systems keep working in the foreseeable future, and will the world be able to feed its exploding populations? My idea is to assess whether the answers to these questions are likely to be positive. Is there cause for optimism?

Living in peace

Peaceful togetherness. Marine iguanas in the Galapogos

Taking them in order, the first is the matter of living in peace. If we look at humanity as a whole we have to admit that this is an unattainable goal. Humans are aggressive, argumentative and very prone to violence. But we could do better (that’s what I used to get on my school reports). Article 2 of the charter of the United Nations says  that ‘All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.’ If all nations adhered to that, in good faith, it would be a good start. In that respect  we have to note that one of the worst offenders is the United States, where there is a persistent belief that, in the long term, democracy is the only viable political system and a ‘uniquely American realism’ teaches that ‘it is America’s job to change the world, and in it’s own image’[1]. This breathtaking arrogance, based in neo-conservative rhetoric and evangelical Protestant beliefs, has been behind US military interventions in various countries (the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama (they pick their victims!) Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan – and  perhaps Pakistan. Vietnam was slightly different: the rationale in that case was to prevent its take-over by Communism, a position fuelled by Cold War paranoia and the idea that Communism was a homogeneous monster intent on world domination.

Military interventions, far from introducing the American version of democracy, have frequently generated strong local resistance, in some cases dragging the US into drawn-out conflicts in which there is no prospect of victory in any conventional sense. This was certainly the case in Vietnam, whatever the reason for intervention there, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan – where they’re still involved. The tendency to attack other countries has been reinforced by the idea that violence is a reasonable solution to anything that is contrary (or appears to be contrary) to perceived interests of the US. So we have the ill-advised and poorly conceived ‘war on terror’  in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks which led, for highly dubious reasons, to the second Iraq war and the current war in Afghanistan.

Picking on the US isn’t a matter of bias; the size and importance of that nation makes it’s behaviour central to the problem. For the world as a whole there’s not much chance of any sort of progress towards real and lasting peace unless nations genuinely respect the charter of the UN, and refrain from interfering with, or exploiting, each other. In other words, mind their own business. In the case of the US, this means that the country should abandon the idea of military intervention in countries that are not particularly friendly to them; it should dismantle the world-wide system of military bases that it maintains and make a serious move towards nuclear disarmament, which would entail a willingness to destroy – or at least radically reduce – its own nuclear arsenal. In the case of China, the question has to be asked: ‘What is your current massive military build up for?” The country would be regarded with much less suspicion if it wasn’t doing that. And so we could go on. Other threats to peace are Israel and the Arabs, Iran, North Korea… and then, of course, there’s the possibility that fundamentalist Muslims, fanatically committed to jihad and the destruction of the infidel west, might get hold of a nuclear weapon.

Questions also arise about interventions in countries experiencing civil unrest. There are UN rules that govern these interventions; they don’t work very well (note the failure in Rwanda, the mess in the Congo and Darfur), but one would have to argue that it would be better to work on and through these procedures and get them right, which would require more enthusiastic and  unbiased support from countries like the US, China and Russia than they give now. Not much chance, I guess. As I write this Libya is  in a state of upheaval and Gaddafi is killing Libyans by the thousand in his determination to hold onto power. It’s going to end in tears.

So, taken overall, I don’t expect harmony, altruism and peace to break out all over. My guess (for the little it’s worth) is that domestic upheavals in various countries will go on and Israel will probably have another go at Hizbollah in Lebanon which, since that organization is  strongly supported by Iran may turn out even uglier than usual. There will be wars and violent upheavals triggered by terrorism, disputes over water, or oil or living space, but we will probably be spared another major war – one that will have large, direct effects on the western countries – for the foreseeable future (let’s say, the next 25 years). Most of us will be able to ignore those and go about our lives – as we like to do.

---

[1] Condoleezza Rice. ‘Rethinking the national interest’. Foreign Affairs. July- Aug. 2008.

Where do we go from here: 1

This is the first of five posts; the others follow on with some ideas about where we (i.e. the human race – nothing small about this!) are heading.

Some thoughts on the state of the world

It’s possible to get quite depressed about the state of the world and it’s prospects, if you let it get to you, although I recognise that’s pretty stupid as there’s nothing I – or any individual – can do about it. Nevertheless, although undoubtedly an exercise in futility, I thought it might be interesting to try to imagine how things might be fixed – or at least how they might be stabilised. (You have to be seriously unwise to venture into this kind of futurism, but people take the junk associated with Nostradamus seriously, so what the hell!) Unfortunately, the first step in this process has to be an assessment of where we are now, which is a recipe for getting depressed, but let’s proceed.

I’ll start with the fairly basic question of whether we’re likely to live in peace or get obliterated by war. There has been no war that has directly affected the populations of the developed western countries[1] since World War II; whole generations have grown up with the idea that peace is normal and material prosperity is all that matters, that this is how things are, and will remain. In fact there has never been complete peace in the world; in recent times there have been wars in Korea, in Vietnam, between Britain and Argentina, between the Israelis and Arabs, in Iraq (twice), ugly conflicts in the Balkans, as well as civil wars and upheavals in various African (e.g. the Congo, Sudan, Sierra Leone), South American and Asian countries, and of course the long-running war in Afghanistan. (The United Nations recognised 49 major conflicts around the world in the 1990s, in which more than four million people died.)

Anyone who is at all aware of what’s going on in the world as a whole will know about all those disturbances, but for most people they’re not events that impinge on them in any direct way. Of course there have been a few terrorist attacks (the so-called 9/11 attack on the twin towers in New York, bombs on trains in Madrid and London, a few smaller bombs here and there) but, although these generate a great deal of fuss and hand-wringing, they directly affect only a very small proportion of the population. So peace seems to be a permanent state of affairs in our societies and we are able, generally, to ignore violent conflicts that don’t affect us directly and go our merry way, with ever increasing standards of living and ever more focus on our own comfort and individual satisfaction.

Sunset in the Pacific - conventional peaceful scene but it doesn't reflect human behaviour

Western societies have also got used to the idea that continual economic growth is normal and can be expected to continue. In general we’re convinced that the world is driven by economics and that economics provide the ultimate measure of all values and a valid basis for most decisions. We’re obsessed with the price fluctuations on the stock exchanges, with short-term economic growth (measured by GDP - an irrational parameter that distorts assessment of the real well-being of people), with demand for and consumption of goods and services, with the housing market, balance of trade, incomes and jobs, and so on and on.

But we have to ask whether our modern system of global trade and economics is rock solid stable. The market crash and financial crisis of late 2008 suggest that it’s not and, for reasons I’ll outline further on, there has to be a very high probability of future hiccups that will de-rail the whole edifice, with unforeseeable results. (For starters, just think about the fact that China owns a huge amount of the escalating debt of the United States: trillions of dollars. Now imagine China and the US getting into a serious argument!)

The way we in the ‘west’ have been living in the last 100 years (particularly the last 50) has resulted in the utilization of more than half the (known and suspected) oil reserves of the earth, so we are in the era of peak oil; from now on the fossil fuel that drives our societies will become increasingly scarce and expensive. That obviously has huge economic implications. And in the course of using the oil we have pumped into the atmosphere vast quantities of CO₂ and other gases that trap the long-wave radiation emitted by the earth, so that temperatures must gradually rise. Burning huge quantities of coal – which is not going to run out – contributes substantially to this. We have also destroyed – and continue to destroy – wonderful ecosystems, and we have degraded vast tracts of land, where soil fertility is declining because of the agricultural practices we have used and continue to follow. This has implications for food production.

A very big problem that’s going to affect our prospects of living in peace, of stable economic systems and of energy supplies, is human population growth. Our numbers are exploding! The actual and projected numbers of humans don’t matter all that much – they are big numbers: about 6.5 billion (six and a half thousand million) alive now, expected to reach more than 9 billion in mid-century.  A great many of these people live in the mega-cities round the world (Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Bombay (Mumbai), New York City….) with their traffic congestion, pollution and slums. I think big cities are truly horrible places, but I have been privileged to spend most of my life with lots of space around me, away from high concentrations of people and seething traffic. Most of the millions (billions?) of people who live in big cities have never known anything else and don’t know what it would be like to live more relaxed and pleasant lives – a sad reflection on the present state of the human race, but there’s nothing that can be done about that.

Not only do these multitudes of people have to be fed but, increasingly, a high proportion of them aspires to the standards of living and eating enjoyed by those in the profligate and privileged ‘west’. Well, those aspirations aren’t going to be fulfilled. There are already food shortages in the world, ameliorated in desperate areas by food aid shipped in at considerable expense from areas of plenty, with the expenditure of yet more fossil fuel, but the supply and transport of this food depends on donations, which don’t keep pace with needs. Countries that have to buy food – which includes most north African and Middle Eastern countries – are finding that prices are going up. This is already contributing to social instability, and people keep reproducing enthusiastically so the problem keeps getting worse.

---

[1] By ‘western’ societies I mean those of the so-called western countries: Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Many - in fact most – other countries are (to varying degrees) highly westernised, in the sense that they contain modern institutions that are apparently consistent with western practice and materialist approaches. The differences lie in the assumptions about basic philosophy and approach to government that underlie their political and social systems.

The need for identity

 

It’s often taken as axiomatic, in any discussion about the human condition nowadays, that people need high self-esteem for optimum well-being. This would be very hard to measure, but it seems a reasonable assumption. Self-esteem breeds self respect and self confidence. These are, arguably, essential characteristics of well-rounded personalities who are comfortable in themselves and likely to be valuable members of their communities. Underlying all this is the need for a sense of identity: we’re unlikely to have high self-esteem if no-one knows or cares about us; we all need to be recognised by our peers and acknowledged as of value to our communities. We all need to be able to answer the question: ’who am I, and where do I fit into society?’

That we feel these needs is not surprising when we look at our evolutionary background. Throughout most of the period of human evolution and development, available archeological evidence indicates that we lived in small, self-sufficient groups in which the way of life, based on hunting and gathering food, did not change much for thousands of years. Humans with body form much like that we have now have been around at least since the Cro-Magnons emerged about 50,000 years ago. They were essentially fully modern humans in terms of skeletons, and the ability to produce tools. There is some evidence of advanced cultural traits, but these only developed slowly. ‘Technology’ changed very gradually. The Stone ages gave way to the Bronze and Iron ages, although not at the same time in all communities. Somewhere around 5 - 8,000 years ago the archeological records indicate the beginnings of agriculture in various places: plants were deliberately established for the food they could provide and some animals became domesticated. About 5000 years ago settlements and communities, characterized by higher population densities than those of the hunter-gatherer bands, became established in southern Mesopotamia – now Iraq. These mark the beginnings of civilization and recorded history and from this time cultural evolution proceeded much more rapidly. But all this cultural development has only been going on for – at most – about one-tenth of the time that humans have been around.

Human behaviour patterns, as they evolved over thousands of years, were geared to life within small groups where there was no problem about recognition or personal identity. Observation of hunter-gatherer groups that survived into modern times shows that the place and role of each individual in these was recognised and individual contributions to group survival and welfare were highly valued. The psychological well-being and the welfare of the individual were strongly associated with the welfare and well-being of the group, which may have been part of a larger grouping – a tribe. These recognition and behaviour patterns are embedded in our genes, in the sense that there would have been positive selection pressures acting in favour of those who conformed to them. This is why the punishment of exile was historically so serious: those who were banished from their community or tribe lost the protection of those communities and the support of their families; they did not belong anywhere and not only lacked the protection of their community, but were also likely to be psychologically devastated. With the establishment of larger communities in towns and cities, where population numbers gradually increased from hundreds to thousands (and are now in the millions), community bonds became weaker and it became harder and harder for individuals to retain their personal importance and identity. Nevertheless, tribal bonds and associations remain strong and important.

There’s plenty of empirical - or at least anecdotal - evidence for this need to belong: we just have to look at the way people behave. Most of our social activities are in quite small groups or organizations within which there are sub-groups that provide their members with their recognised personal niche and to which members frequently show (sometimes strong) loyalty. The ‘units’ that we relate to obviously overlap: people feel strong rapport with ‘their’ team, their town or state – with any group that reinforces their sense of identity: this is who I am; this is why I matter. Examples include sports clubs, church groups, professional societies and groups within workplaces. But we also identify with our country: patriotism in many countries may not be the force it once was (and still is in the United States), but jingoistic enthusiasm for our national identity surges up when it comes to support for sports teams or individuals – the feeling of ‘togetherness’, of almost fanatical tribalism generated by enthusiastic and excited groups, can be extremely strong.

Individuals have different status and importance relative to the other members of each of the groups, communities, or sub-cultures to which they belong. Their status at work or in a professional society may be entirely different from their status in the local sports club. The net result defines their view of themselves in relation to their society. Young people, without focus in society, especially young people who come from broken or dysfunctional families, are likely to join gangs, or indulge in behaviour which will be labelled antisocial by society as a whole, but which is driven by their need to be recognised, to have status within some group, to have an identity. Some of these groups might have bizarre initiation ceremonies and rites of passage. But, once in, you belong, and have the key to self esteem.

Another factor that might influence  our confidence and well-being is a sense of place. Those who grow up in the area where they were born are not only likely to be  strongly embedded in their local community – assuming it’s reasonably stable – but also, usually, feel strongly connected to the land, to familiar countryside, to the characteristics of scenery and season. The strength of this propensity is very clear from the completely subjective way people tend to extol the beauty and advantages of their country or, quite frequently, the part of the country they live in. There is a visceral bond, weaker in most peripatetic westerners, but astonishingly strong in Aboriginal peoples; for Australian aborigines ‘my country’ is of central importance – they feel the spirit of the country, of their ancestors. It defines their sense of identity; if they are taken from it the pull to return is clearly sometimes overwhelming, and when the tribal and community system in which they have their being breaks down, their lives become dysfunctional, directionless. We of Caucasian descent, immigrants long since displaced from our places of origin, nevertheless feel their atavistic attraction and tend to associate ourselves with those places, although we may know that we will never go back to them. The pull is weaker for us and, in most cases, not a dominant factor in our psyche and our view of ourselves; we have transferred our weaker sense of place to our adopted countries but the strength of the attraction and commitment is likely to vary depending on how long we have lived there, and whether we have stayed in one locality.

This quest for identity shows itself strongly among the young (many of whom are not dysfunctional), who use social networking packages such as Twitter and Facebook to ensure that they are ‘connected’ virtually all the time. Whether that electronic connectedness is an adequate substitute for genuine, face-to-face human contact and interaction is arguable, but it’s clear that many are driven by the feeling that it’s essential to be ‘on the air’ all the time. Some feel compelled to respond almost continuously to the flood of ‘tweets’ that clog their mobile (cell) phones, and if they haven’t updated their Facebook page for a few hours they become concerned that they are out of touch, that they might lose their (largely mythical) place in the virtual community in which they feel they have an identity. Connection is the goal. The quality of that connection, the quality of the information that passes through it, the quality of the relationships that connection permits—none of this is important. Social networking software clearly encourages people to make weak, superficial connections with each other, hardly likely to contribute positively to constructive social discourse. Most of those virtual friends are unlikely to care about the well-being of the individual, represented by a name and a photograph and some standardized, mostly trivial, social data. So we have to ask whether this kind of connectedness provides an adequate substitute for recognition and acknowledgement by real people in the real world. It seems unlikely.

The whole question of ambition and the urge of so many people to be seen, to be recognised, to have publicly acknowledged status, could usefully be analysed in terms of this human need for identity. Ambition, when you get right down to it, can generally be explained as the drive to be considered important, or interesting, to be identifiable by as many people as possible. Most of those who ‘bask in the public eye’ are concerned with their image and with this ‘recognition factor’. Of course there are people of high ability or achievement who don’t seek the limelight because they are quite comfortable with themselves and don’t require overt recognition and acknowledgement of who they are to maintain their self-esteem and sense of worth.

I think it’s reasonable to speculate that the gradual breakdown of families and family bonds in Western societies must be a major factor contributing to social problems in those societies. There have been social problems of various sorts ever since people began to congregate in large numbers in cities and towns, where individuals tend to disappear in the heaving anonymity of the mass, but the current narcissistic cult of individual satisfaction (‘Me first; what I want is the most important thing!’) and lack of any universally accepted system of morality and responsibility for communities – arising from the lack of recognition within communities –  are almost certainly major contributors to current problems. Strong, loving and supportive families, embedded in stable communities, minimise them, as does any supportive group, but it’s hard not to be pessimistic about the outlook.

Can the young solve the world’s problems?

Storm clouds over Botswana - and the world?

There is a widespread tendency amongst the young to be impatient of their parents’ generation as old-fashioned, boring and out-of–touch with the modern world. And it’s common to hear older generations lament the behaviour and attitudes of the young. It’s also common to hear the confident assertion that it has always been thus.

In fact intergenerational friction – at least at the levels common in most modern societies – is almost certainly a relatively new phenomenon. It’s caused by the large and rapid changes affecting most aspects of contemporary life: the young adapt to the changes more easily than their parents and the older generation as a whole, so they’re likely to be impatient of that generation and it’s conservatism, while the old decry the changes and developments they do not always understand, nor see the need for. Many of them are incompetent users of computers and only use mobiles (cell phones) as telephones. They don’t understand or see the need for things such as iPods and the ‘apps’ that run on mobiles and tablets, and they frequently find the manners, dress, music and behaviour of the young unacceptable. But there are also less immediately obvious changes taking place, for which the older generation – largely the so-called baby-boomers, born in and between the 1950s and the 1970s – are responsible, but which many of them do not recognise or acknowledge. These involve resources and energy use and the impact of humans on the planet – matters that the young may be more aware of and concerned about than their parents. So there is plenty of scope for intergenerational friction.

This was not the case through most of human history. For long periods – let’s say for a couple of hundred thousand years – human societies were remarkably stable, changing only very slowly. Most people lived in small communities where the generations, like the seasons, succeeded each other without much change. There were blips in the cycles, caused by famine or plague or war, but these disasters were part of the accepted patterns of existence and were accepted as such. They did not bring about changes in the way people lived. For thousands of years there were few changes in the technologies used in agriculture, where most people worked and most tasks were done by hand or with the help of animals, or in methods of travel or communication. For most people, except for the rich and the ruling classes, who travelled on horseback or in some sort of (usually horse-drawn) conveyance, the only way to travel was to walk, so few people left the areas where they lived. There was, generally, none of the interchange of ideas that may come from travel. Few people were educated; work began early in life and the work done by children was often important for the survival of their families and communities. There were no books; writing in any form only developed about 5000 years ago and the first printed books (the Gutenberg Bible) only appeared in the middle of the 15^th century.

And so we could go on, and if we were inclined to get involved in detail, we might argue about differences between regions and races, or about the influence of armies and empires that may have absorbed the culture of the conquered, or transmitted to them the culture of the conquerors. Or we might argue about the relationships between generations that might have pertained in advanced cultures with complex societies, such as the ancient Chinese, or the Mayo and the Aztecs in South America, or the ancient Egyptians, and primitive cultures in Africa or parts of south-east Asia. But it is probably safe to say that, in most of these societies, rebellious behaviour by the young would have received short shrift: over most of human history cultural change was slow and, from generation to generation, young people grew up (if they survived) with the same beliefs, prejudices, superstitions and ideas about the way life should be lived as their parents and those around them. They followed, without question, the old-established patterns of living. In primitive societies life was an uncertain business and survival was the first priority. Few got the chance to grow old and there wasn’t much time or energy to spare for apparently pointless rebellion. The experience of those who did survive offered the best guide to living and the young followed as best they could – or were sternly disciplined to do so. The rewards, in the form of status, prestige and possibly authority, came with age and experience.

But gradually, at least in Europe, the long darkness of pre-medieval times began to lift. For most people the social changes that came were imperceptible, but as populations increased and cities grew larger the number of people in merchant classes, who traded with distant countries, increased. Communications improved as written material became more common among the merchant and ruling classes. The invention of the printing press in Europe in about 1450, and the advent of printed books, of which the Bible was the first, were epoch-making events in history. Before the invention of the printing press ownership of a bible, or any book, was rare. But as the presses proliferated not only bibles, but other books, became available to increasing proportions of the population, and the information available to people increased rapidly. This in turn stimulated the development of literacy. By the end of the 17^th century novels and story books, technical literature and political pamphlets, were becoming commonplace. The number of people who could read, although it remained small, increased gradually. Newspapers and magazines appeared in the 18^th century and by the 19^th century literacy was sufficiently widespread to create a market for a cheap press, which in turn led to the development of advertising.

Increasing literacy and the flow of information that came with newspapers led to increasing awareness of the world outside the restricted confines of small societies. This, coupled with the massive changes brought about by the industrial revolution of the 19^th century, and by the world wars in the first half of the 20^th century brought about immense and rapid changes in society, culminating in it’s complete disintegration, in Europe, at the end of World War II. The United States, untouched directly by the war – the country was not invaded or bombed and there was no military action on the American mainland – experienced an industrial boom triggered by the massive production of aircraft, tanks, ships, weapons and all the material needed by the military. After the war the energy and resources that had been focused on all this, and the return to civilian life of more than a million ex-servicemen, led to an unprecedented surge in production of consumer goods.

The Marshal Plan, by which the United States provided enormous amounts of aid to Europe, underpinned the astonishing economic and social post-war recovery there. Recovery in the Soviet Union was slower, and was distorted by the Communist emphasis on heavy industry and impractical production targets. Communism also imposed a grey uniformity on populations; dissent was ruthlessly quashed and personal freedom severely restricted. But in the United States and Western Europe (particularly), burgeoning technical innovations, and production of consumer goods went hand-in-hand with rapidly changing social attitudes. Ideas about social duty and obligation to society came to be replaced by the cult of the supremacy of the individual; the doctrine that personal freedom and the satisfaction of their every whim and want was the highest social priority  came to be accepted as inarguable.

The generation that grew to maturity in Europe in the 1960s and ‘70s wanted nothing to do with the world their parents had known, a world of war followed by years of shortages. They remained in school for longer than ever before and ever- increasing numbers were university-educated which, in itself, created a gulf between them and their parents. Theirs was a world of material satisfactions, of fashion and music and television and, increasingly, of self gratification. Many became impatient with their parents and their attitudes and ideas, impatient of their conservatism. The young wanted something different; utopian ideas about changing society spread, leading to dissent from conventional expectations and attitudes. Young people in the post-war United States were endlessly indulged, endlessly told they could achieve anything they aspired to in the land of unlimited opportunity. The materialist American way of life was assumed to be the ultimate good life but it produced a backlash: the feeling that there must be more to life than this led to contempt for establishment attitudes, dress and manners and exploded in the protests against the Vietnam war, in the counterculture movement, ideas about free love, student protests and the appearance of hippies.

Thirty years later much of the turmoil has subsided: economic pressures have replaced youthful idealism – owning a car and a house and all the electronic gizmos and gadgets that characterise modern life in the developed countries has become the primary objective for most people. The idealists and hippies have succumbed to middle-aged conservatism and the consumer life-style. Materialism rules. And that goes for their children, who want all the toys – and they want them now! – as well as untrammeled personal freedom. The ‘me first, and I want more’ attitude is almost universal. Education is not about ideas; it’s about acquiring the skills needed to accumulate wealth. So the objectives and priorities of the generation currently in their late teens and early twenties have converged with those of their baby-boomer parents. But that doesn’t seem to have brought the generations closer psychologically and emotionally. The young are still impatient of their parents, but for different reasons. They still want to ‘do their own thing’ and, because they are given remarkable freedom, any attempt by parents to impose control is resented. And the parents are likely to be regarded as old-fashioned because they decry modern music, may not be computer literate, or appreciate or be interested in Facebook and Twitter or spend a large part of their time ‘connecting’ through their cell phones. So the gap between the generations is maintained – or, indeed, may grow – despite the fact that, when life gets difficult many of the young turn back to their parents for support. (The situation is different in so-called underdeveloped countries, where the young aspire to the modern consumer lifestyle and material comforts undreamt of by their parents.)

All that is rather a long-winded way of making the point that (in my view) the generation gap is a modern phenomenon. Does it matter? Well, yes, it does; in fact, in some respects, I think  that there must be a generation gap. The world is changing faster than at any time in history and the changes are causing enormous problems. The flexibility of youth allows the young cope with and adapt to change better than older people, and there are encouraging signs that many of them show signs of recognising and adapting to the emerging reality that the affluent life-style in developed countries – and the life-style of the affluent in underdeveloped countries – cannot continue into the indefinite future. Things cannot go on as they are now. There will be shortages of energy and other resources – including food, although that is unlikely to affect affluent societies for some time yet. So, we need young people who will reject the complacency – or shortsightedness – of their parents and acknowledge all this, since problems can’t be solved unless they are recognised and acknowledged. Even my cursory scan through history is enough to show that human societies are not stable; in fact if we think about the explosive growth of human populations we don’t need to know much history to know that things are changing – and the changes are coming fast. If the consequences are not to be catastrophic – or at least extremely unpleasant for multitudes of people, and disastrous for the world’s ecology – the young people who will have to live with it all have to solve the problems we have bequeathed to them.