The big rethink

October 1st, 2006

Gardening is always good for me as it gets me exercising, and also gets me thinking.

Reading a great deal, sometimes you get a moment where you see connections that perhaps you had not seen before.

This weekend I wonder if the world – well in fact humans and society are in fact going through a big rethink about what we want to be – what type of society and what type of world we want to live in? See what I mean!

That is why I have called this post the Big Rethink – last time we did this was in the Renaissance

Question: Do we want a more liberal society, a better safer world, a better marriage between economic production and people, a richer cultural experience, equality for all?

Answer: Well of course.

And that is why we are having a really Big Rethink – and in fact we are all part of it in one way or another.

But lets start with the notion of control. Henry Porter describes the story of when Alexander the Great in 337BC attacking the fortress of Termessus in his thought leader Why we are still getting it so wrong in the ‘war on terror’ orders the total destruction of all the olive groves, that are a crucial part of that regions economy as a means of cynical retribution.

An act, Porter reminds us, that is then remembered for centuries. In a present day context this act is repeated by the American forces in Iraq at a place called Dhuluaya as a collective modern act of retribution.

Porters argument is that the Bush and Blair governments get it so very badly wrong. And this is where we go back to the point that we are entering a new phase in the world order.

At the end of bad week in publicity terms, the White House has to deal with Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial, which reveals that Bush ignored the mounting insurrection in Iraq and that the White House was riven with disputes over the war between the Cheney/Rumsfeld faction and the former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and Andrew Card, a former chief of staff. Rumsfeld is depicted as arrogant and contemptuous of other members of the administration as well as being totally disengaged from the details of occupying and reconstructing Iraq, which was then the Pentagon’s responsibility.

The desire to exert control in such a way is part of a very industrialised view of the world. It smacks of an administration seriously adrift from the reality of the world it lives in. Just read Rageh Omaar’s Revolution Day to understand that

And of course we have the big word trust – cut away from those it should belong to – governments and those that are supposedly representative of the people, the UN and global businesses.

And a lot of people did not want the war in Iraq and yet they were not listened to. Can we trust the news, can we trust the motives of those that apprantly are there for our protection.

Porter comments on Blair – who was famously quoted as saying

God will judge me on Iraq.

He’s such a little optimist.

And its back to control and who in fact has it – It seems the Blair and Bush Governments feel rather nebulous about their responsibility in Iraq.

Given the state of Iraq, the diaspora of terror cells, the scandals of torture and extra- judicial punishment in Guantánamo and Britain, it is remarkable that Blair is still Prime Minister, that no member of the war cabinet has apologised for this calamitous record and that the Labour party has not signaled its remorse in the slightest way. Last week’s conference was devoted to a series of setpieces in which those responsible for the greatest foreign policy disaster since the Second World War were allowed to posture in front of a largely compliant audience.
I had the advantage of reading and not seeing Blair’s speech, which meant that I wasn’t exposed to his demonic charm and did not fall into the swoon that afflicted so many colleagues. I urge you to find the speech on the Labour party website and read exactly what he said and, while you’re about it, look up John Reid’s speech, too. Both their statements on liberty are enough to give you an idea of the profound threat they represent to British democracy, to the traditions of open and accountable government, to the previous requirement that politicians accept responsibility for failed policies.
Blair’s speech dealt with terrorism in the following sentences. ‘This terrorism isn’t our fault. We didn’t cause it. It’s not the consequence of foreign policy. It’s an attack on our way of life.’ He might have said that on 12 September 2001 and he would have been right, but five years later, it is his and Bush’s response to the threat – the invasion of Iraq – that has provided stimulus to the growth of terrorism and made the clash of civilisations a frightening possibility.

And the Republicans are now on the ropes, the issue they will face is that their notions of control, control of politics, control of ideology, religious extremism have been found wanting, on an epic scale I might add.

There is no doubt that we are facing an uncertain world, there is no doubt there are many radicals out there that want to do us harm – But what I see is a big rethink about whether we want to live in a locked down world or whether we want to live in a freer more open and tolerant society.

This rethink is as much about what the West wants to become as views on moderate or fundamentalist views held by all religions and ideology.

Compare and contrast these two stories. Both are about locking down peoples rights in one way or another.

We’ve had abortions, say 5,000 Americans as crucial vote nears

More than 5,000 women from across the United States have revealed that they have had abortions, in advance of a crucial vote next month that could determine whether terminations remain legal across the country.
The list, published next week in the feminist magazine Ms, includes its co-founder Gloria Steinem, the actor Kathy Najimy and comedian Carol Leifer. But most of the names are of ordinary women who have joined the petition out of fear that the tide is turning against legal abortions in America.

The true war is the between a liberal view of the world and a fundamental view of the world.

A virulent minority of Muslims is turning its face against the values of liberal democracy all over western Europe

The answer is that wearing a veil in a largely secular society says something about the woman’s position in her marriage and probably prevents her from engaging with that society properly and so enjoying the rights of other women. It is fundamentally different from wearing, say, a sari or any of the traditional clothes of the Hassidim because it erects a barrier between her and the people around her.
Never having knowingly praised Jack Straw before, I think it’s worth saying that he showed a good deal of courage in bringing this issue to the fore and that he handled it intelligently. We have a problem with radicalised Muslims in Europe. Do we ignore what is going on and hope things just get better or confront the minority and risk antagonising a much larger section of Muslim opinion?

David Cameron the Conservative leader has grasped this will he change how politics is conducted in this country? Its a big ask – but it has to happen.

In a world which is networked, in a world where we share information at warp speed, where truth and transparency are now at the fore – will we as a collective population be tolerant of those that seek to deceive us – for agendas that we are not party to?

We are repossessing our culture and our right to engage.

Fundamentalism has no role to play in our future. In economics, politics, society, culture and religion. Salman Rushdie and the Iranian Fatwa issued against him was perhaps the first sign of the challenges we were going to face in a changing world. But equally the invasion of Iraq and the decimation of the groves around Dhuluaya is about a different mindset premised upon control.

But this war or Big Rethink – is about ideas and how we all want to live.

Identity is a big issue here connected to immigration. We have become by default multicultural – to live together we have to become tolerant of each other.

Our Democracy in the UK is very old and (one that we must preserve) – is premised upon the notion that we all can have our say – the right of free speech is entitled to everybody. And there is good cause for that. Because in dialogue we better understand each other – we can also see our enemies – to drive these things underground means they become hidden – they ferment and they become more dangerous.

And I would argue that democracy deserves the best thinking possible.

What the 2.0 concept demonstrates is the opportunity to utilise tools of cooperation to re-engage, and reinvent that dialogue in politics, in education, in business, in citizen journalism.

Participation and collaboration provide a means to tell richer stories and those stories and the dialogue that falls out of those stories enables us to make better sense of our context in the world. We are the people formerly known as the audience

We are also migrating away from a society driven by consumption. I think this is the beginning of a very long trend, but I think that traditional notions of consumerism are exhausted – and we are arriving at a slow conclusion that there must be more to life than shopping bags. That is the result of economic success.

In Kingdon Come – J.G Ballard writes

“If you can smell the motorway, you’re in the real England,”
The motorway in question is the M25, whose satellite towns make up a St George-flag-toting, casually racist Albion where to be a consumer is to be a citizen; where ownership of a loyalty card represents membership of humanity itself; and where spiritual experience takes the form of retail epiphany. As one typically lucid, socially-fascinated character observes of his fellow-citizens: “We’re all children today. Like it or not, only consumerism can hold a modern society together… Societies are happier when people spend, not save.”

The need for liberal democracy, where we all have a true role to play

Idealists believe that social media improves the processes described above by giving us more efficient tools for discussion and for ‘acting out’ what comes out of these discussions. But the problem is that, in practice, democracy does not unfold so neatly. Mills argued that an unequal distribution of power and knowledge allows a small elite to impose its viewpoint on the population (through the media, for instance) while convincing them that it is the people’s will that the elite is carrying out on its behalf. Authentic democracies require an informed public to operate. Conversely, oligarchies require the consensual passivity and ignorance of a mass. But what role exactly do publics and masses play in each situation?

In a previous post The young disengage with politics we pointed out that…

it is important to be realistic about the obstacles facing young people in their search for knowledge about how society works; who governs them; what their rights are; and how
they can make changes. Society entreats young people to ?be good citizens?, but does not provide them with the tools to become so. At the very least, good citizens need to be informed and to communicate about matters of concern to them. In theory the web, with its encyclopedic store of information and opportunities for interactive chat and discourse, is a perfect space for the cultivation of civic knowledge and participation. It has the potential to nurture a more active form of citizenship where the new media become a locus for participation and a facilitator of a national conversation in which the represented learn to present themselves to one anotherand to their elected representatives.
The context for this research is a conspicuous disengagement from politics by young people. 61% of 18-24 year-olds chose not to cast a vote in the 2001 general election, almost double the number for the electorate as a whole. 46% of 18-24 year-olds were of the view that voting in the 2001 election would not make much of a difference, compared with 34% of the electorate as a whole.
33% of 18-24 year-olds reported having no interest at all in media coverage of the election.
There is a strong correlation between young people?s lack of knowledge about politics and their disengagement from the democratic process. In a May 2001 poll for the Electoral Commission, MORI found that 70% of 18-24 year-olds considered that they knew little or hardly anything about how the Westminster Parliament works, compared with 56% of the electorate as a whole. The majority (59%) of those claiming little or no knowledge of how Parliament works did not vote; the vast majority (89%) of those who claimed to know a fair amount or a great deal about Parliament did cast their votes.
Not surprisingly, those who are most confused by civic and political issues are least likely to engage in civic or political life. They are not disengaged because of antipathy to the political system; nor should they be simplistically blamed as apathetic or indolent.

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