In this video I respond to the following question I received from a reader:
… don’t you think that violence persists even in the developed world through coercion and predatory capitalism? Especially when it comes to third-world nations that are forced to open to multinational businesses that give them the short-end of the stick, and often treat their countries, and their environments, parasitically?
In undergrad, we called this “neo-imperialism” – and despite the fact that multinational corporations are no longer conquering the world with guns and navies (thinking of Japan getting its borders forced open by the US in the 19th century), empires persist in the form of McDonald’s, Walmart, and of course the oil companies. I don’t see how this is necessarily “better.” Rather than militaristic empires, we now appear to have hegemonic forces built explicitly on parasitic capitalism.
This is a view we hear a lot in progressive and integral circles. In the video I attempt to highlight the “piece of the truth” of the Neo-Imperialist thesis, and place it in a larger context that is not nearly so bleak. Let me know what you think!
I hope you’re right , Jeff. I so hope you’re right. I’m circulating this piece to my friends of both persuasions.
But I’ll add that I was a bit unsettled by your uncharacteristically partial opening quote in your previous post, “The Liberals are Winning” — William F. Buckley’s, the role of the conservative in society is to “stand athwart history yelling Stop!”
Allow me to respond with this from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives
is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.” G.K. Chesterton, 1924
I appreciate your insightful comments Jeff. It is easy to feel lost unless you are able to get up on higher ground where one can see a longer distance. Your blog is very helpful in providing this perspective.
I find it helpful to remember that prior to evolutionary events occurring in our society, pain and suffering often preceded them. During the 1960’s civil rights movement we saw arrests, assassinations and other upheaval but it gave way to Civil Rights legislation. In the early 1900’s women were arrested but it gave way to their right to vote in the Women’s Suffrage movement. The Civil War gave birth to the abolition of slavery. More recently equal rights for gay and lesbian people was preceded by a lot of suffering as people worked for change.
A question I have is what do you think is being born as our country now suffers through tremendous polarization? It’s not like one can point to legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Women’s Suffrage in 1913.
Today the fight seems to be over a philosophical vision of where our country should go. It seems that the two poles that arise in most any legislation are those who emphasize “We” and those that emphasize “Me”. This was seen in debate around the Affordable Health Care Act and now the budget debate. The “We” folks are accused of being Socialists and the “Me” folks seem to be “gross individualists”.
These two poles were recently seen as people reacted to Obama’s statement that “If you are successful, you didn’t get there on your own”. The “gross individualists” didn’t seem to understand that most everything we have, even our knowledge came from other people and other generations. To go back to a pure “Me” world, one would have to go back to the caveman era. They emphasized that success is the result of the hard work of the “Me”, while failing to see that the “Me” stands on the shoulders of many generations of “We”.
From my perspective the future is “We”. I found it heartening to learn that evolution is not just about the survival of the fittest. Species that survive have also learned how to cooperate together. That seems to also be the focus of most all major religions and Evolutionaries.
It is difficult to understand why there is such furious animosity between these two poles.
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for featuring my question, many weeks ago at this point. I appreciated the letter-to-the-editor style reading of my comment and your thoughtful response. Also, I would have loved to come on the show, but I was swamped in the middle of my last semester residency at Goddard College, writing up my thesis proposal! Alas, maybe another time.
I’ve listened to this now a few times, and I think that I have finally come away a few insights. The first is, I *do* agree with you that a chubby kid is in a better condition than a starving one, and as a society, having an obesity epidemic vs. a famine is better challenge, because it indicates we, as a technologically advanced society, could be living up to a better potential and that potential could be actualized. No arguments from me here!
But here’s where the issue gets complex. What if the progress of one society is at the expense of another? What if new scientific and technological, heck even social, achievements are at the expense of a dark age for another culture?
In our world, it seems that Dark Ages exist alongside Golden Ages. Huge achievements can be happening right next-door, while the neighbors are in a state of relative poverty. I’ll give one example for the time being:
In the European Dark Ages, all sorts of nomadic tribes and Vikings were scouring the countryside. Territories fought each other viciously in the Feudal state. Health, literacy, and infrastructure all went into decline. Even in places like Rome, knowledge of classic Hellenistic culture was largely forgotten.
Across the sea in Northern Africa and the Middle East, however, the Islamic civilization was thriving. It seemed that Europe’s progress went back before it went “forward.”
Actually, to be honest, it seems that in the evolution of consciousness, development is uneven, and capable of getting “reset” in one place while making new leaps in other places. So even if we are better off today in America, I think we have to also consider that this progress is uneven, and even at the expense of development in other cultures and civilizations like the Middle East.
So my second question to you is: How do we address the issue of progress when, sometimes, progress is at the expense of the development of other cultures, nations or people? Do you address this un-even “ascent” of cultural evolution in your own personal interpretation of the integral worldview? How do we be integral about this?