The Haps

Lately there has been a lot of things happening on this world of ours that deserve to be considered. Naturally there is no easy way for people to find out about these things because they are complicated and often depressing; making it difficult to compete with mindless media that wraps us in complacent ignorance.
Violence continues to be a primary way in which people seek to achieve their goals. Assad has been keeping up the long legacy of brutal repression, and in so doing helps provide the moral high ground that the West so desperately craves. In this particular case however the Russians aren't letting NATO  come in and play morality God, and so 14 months of ruthless conflict continues.

Meanwhile in a desert not so far away, the Tuareg have managed to carve out a country in Northern Mali and called it Azawad. As a principle, I'm opposed to countries for a variety of reasons. However, if any group of people as tough as the Kurds, Pashtuns or Tuareg are denied a state they are going to fight for one. In this particular instance it was the war in Libya that gave them the weapons and experience necessary to drive out the hopelessly inefficient forces of the Malian government.

The situation in China continues to be the histories biggest experiment in state repression. This drama surrounding a blind lawyer advocating the rule of law and the response to Tibetans setting themselves on fire shows the depth of the Communist Parties determination to show no quarter to its foes. They have even started imprisoning people who simply see a Tibetan self-immolate. This is an exciting knew form of censorship that should demonstrate well the way in which government is responding to the challenges of the digital age. Meanwhile the West and the rest engage in colossal hypocrisy by trading with China while trying to criticize the means by which they can deliver such cheap goods.

Three things we should keep in mind about this current economic order-

1. "Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent." -Benjamin Disraeli

2. "In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality." -Marx

3. LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist. -Devil's Dictionary 

The Shitabyss!

"Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility." -William Godwin

People behaving stupidly is certainly not the monopoly of late stage post industrial capitalist consumer society, but YE GODS we are dealing with some painfully foolish creatures. Now I'm not claiming that the previous epochs weren't drowning with dumb. What I'm arguing is that the idiocy is escalating with each baby thrown into this battle royale called humanity. 

Case in point: Europe's buck wild attempt at global domination, followed by its even more hardcore attempt to kill everyone from Japan to England, was perhaps the largest test ever attempted and arguably the most idiotic thought to yet enter the human mindstream. The conclusion that seems to have been arrived at after all the data was gathered was that warfare among militaristic industrialized societies wasn't such a great idea after all. It produced a lot of technology, nationalism and bodies; but it was too risky because once they got their blood lust on it was hard to stop before everyone died due to the efficacy of the weapons. So it was decided to go back to what Europe had perfected over the previous century, slaughtering and robbing the less aggressive peoples of the planet (which is pretty much everyone) under the guise of free trade and a funny understanding of the term development. 

I must say that I'm disappointed that we have regressed. After the grand spectacle of the Great Wars why go back to the petty imperialism of yesteryear? I think my man Debs had it right: 
"How stupid and shortsighted the ruling class really is! Cupidity is stone blind. It has no vision. The greedy, profit-seeking exploiter cannot see beyond the end of his nose. He can see a chance for an "opening"; he is cunning enough to know what graft is and where it is, and it can be secured, but vision he has none- not the slightest." 
Despite all their power and wealth, the rich really are a bunch of redundant dipshits that are about as creative as a cancer cell. I would feel better about this fact if they weren't clearly smarter than everyone else on earth whom they manage to bend to their demented will. The sting wouldn't be so bad if they didn't justify it all with such impressively idiotic ideology:

'We need to bomb a country to free them from themselves'

'Cutting support for the poor and lowering taxes on the rich is needed, especially when times are bad'

'Voting matters even if it has no effect on foreign policy or the economic system under which we live.'

I think that most citizens in the Imperial Nations know this is some seriously stinky putrid bullshit and don't really believe anything they are told by these fucktards. And yet they still pay taxes, consume with endless avarice and behave with staggering disregard for both people and planet. Guess ideology, like shit, flows downhill. My candidate for dumbest thing ever is when they decry their government and global injustice all the while knowing that they won't do a damn thing to help anyone if it threatens their living standard; perhaps this is the new development that the previous experiments have led us to- doublethink. 

Dancing in the Streets

Considering all the people protesting economic conditions around the world it seems interesting to me that people don't start taking the logical step from dissatisfaction to resistance. I am not insinuating that they need to man the barricades  and break out the guillotine, such action has consistently proven to be a short cut to social change that leads in the opposite direction. What I see as the only logical step would be to stop complaining and start systematically setting up an alternative system. If you can not change something, change the way you think about it.

It seems to me that many people in the wealthy world have forgotten that this whole social/economic system is voluntary. The global dominance of the bourgeoisie comes from their ability to set cultural norms and establish a psychological hegemony. It doesn't matter if people embrace it or bitch about it, just as long as they keep spending money and breeding. Ergo the answer is clearly to stop doing one of those two things, and considering how much people love breeding it must be the former. This could take the form of a consumption strike in the developed world, which will do more than any amount of nonviolent protesting. Or it could take the form of these people forming syndicates in order to have their basic needs met without having to be dependent on some sort of bureaucracy that apparently must inevitably turn pernicious. 

I fully accept that what I am proposing is infinitely harder than protesting within the liberal democratic system and requires a level of effort that most people in the West are surely unwilling to engage in. But what about that vast majority of the world that isn't enjoying a high standard of living? They are equally vital to the system and have a much greater need for it to be changed because their immediate existence is threatened. It would be much easier than revolution because all they would have to do is stop working and focus on producing food and medicine. By far the best option however would be for both groups to work together and start accepting that as long as the bourgeoisie maintains its ascendancy we must accept living in a violent, unjust and environmentally unsustainable system. 

One can understand peoples frustration and the feeling of solidarity that one gets from protesting with people of a like mind. If protesting in a developed society truly changed anything I promise you it would be outlawed. There is a very good reason why people in the Middle East are shot for protesting and those in the West are not. The fact is that in our world of omnipresent capitalism protest is absolutely useless in terms of making a world in which the value of life transcends the value of profit and material possessions. It is no different than peasants going hat in hand before a crown to beg some alms except that sometimes a monarch was capable of compassion.