The Process of De-civilisation - an "article" by Brian Eno

I alluded to this in the Syria Thread - couldn’t do a link post or find it on a phone so went old tech.

I believe this is an excellent and thought provoking read and (should) provide many weeks/hours of debate and reference where we see this type of thing occuring.

I don’t necessarily agree with every word per se, but I do think that I have tried to post “non partisan” observations of the insanity of “Western Politics & Democracy” I have never been close to 1% as eloquent as Brian is. My thoughts were more a gut feel that something was wrong. I do believe that a lot of you guys out there feel this too, and not just about Claude Puel :wink:

Anyway. IMHO Trump & Brexit were important landmarks, may not be good ones in the short term but a lot of people stood up and pushed back at what the ruling elite were telling them. I think he has a point.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/read-brian-enos-sobering-2016-143440108.html

https://www.facebook.com/brianenomusic/?fref=ts

2016/2017

The consensus among most of my friends seems to be that 2016 was a terrible year, and the beginning of a long decline into something we don’t even want to imagine.

2016 was indeed a pretty rough year, but I wonder if it’s the end - not the beginning - of a long decline. Or at least the beginning of the end….for I think we’ve been in decline for about 40 years, enduring a slow process of de-civilisation, but not really quite noticing it until now. I’m reminded of that thing about the frog placed in a pan of slowly heating water…

This decline includes the transition from secure employment to precarious employment, the destruction of unions and the shrinkage of workers’ rights, zero hour contracts, the dismantling of local government, a health service falling apart, an underfunded education system ruled by meaningless exam results and league tables, the increasingly acceptable stigmatisation of immigrants, knee-jerk nationalism, and the concentration of prejudice enabled by social media and the internet.

This process of decivilisation grew out of an ideology which sneered at social generosity and championed a sort of righteous selfishness. (Thatcher: “Poverty is a personality defect”. Ayn Rand: “Altruism is evil”). The emphasis on unrestrained individualism has had two effects: the creation of a huge amount of wealth, and the funnelling of it into fewer and fewer hands. Right now the 62 richest people in the world are as wealthy as the bottom half of its population combined. The Thatcher/Reagan fantasy that all this wealth would ‘trickle down’ and enrich everybody else simply hasn’t transpired. In fact the reverse has happened: the real wages of most people have been in decline for at least two decades, while at the same time their prospects - and the prospects for their children - look dimmer and dimmer. No wonder people are angry, and turning away from business-as-usual government for solutions. When governments pay most attention to whoever has most money, the huge wealth inequalities we now see make a mockery of the idea of democracy. As George Monbiot said: “The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the purse is mightier than the pen”.

Last year people started waking up to this. A lot of them, in their anger, grabbed the nearest Trump-like object and hit the Establishment over the head with it. But those were just the most conspicuous, media-tasty awakenings. Meanwhile there’s been a quieter but equally powerful stirring: people are rethinking what democracy means, what society means and what we need to do to make them work again. People are thinking hard, and, most importantly, thinking out loud, together. I think we underwent a mass disillusionment in 2016, and finally realised it’s time to jump out of the saucepan.

This is the start of something big. It will involve engagement: not just tweets and likes and swipes, but thoughtful and creative social and political action too. It will involve realising that some things we’ve taken for granted - some semblance of truth in reporting, for example - can no longer be expected for free. If we want good reporting and good analysis, we’ll have to pay for it. That means MONEY: direct financial support for the publications and websites struggling to tell the non-corporate, non-establishment side of the story. In the same way if we want happy and creative children we need to take charge of education, not leave it to ideologues and bottom-liners. If we want social generosity, then we must pay our taxes and get rid of our tax havens. And if we want thoughtful politicians, we should stop supporting merely charismatic ones.

Inequality eats away at the heart of a society, breeding disdain, resentment, envy, suspicion, bullying, arrogance and callousness. If we want any decent kind of future we have to push away from that, and I think we’re starting to.

There’s so much to do, so many possibilities. 2017 should be a surprising year.

  • Brian

11 Likes

I like Eno, and there’s a lot of sense there.

4 Likes

He talks an awful lot of sense but the biggest problem is that a lot of the kind of soft-nationalism and protectionism you’re seeing is a response to precisely the kind of individualist, selfish culture he’s criticising, which largely, stems from globalisation - which allows corporations to undercut working-class wages through outsourcing/taxes to be effortlessly avoided by the super-rich and so on.

Now, you can argue that whilst it may be the biggest driver of inequality worldwide, globalisation is, overall, to the benefit of more-or-less everyone (in varying degrees), due to economic growth/steady empowerment of the poor who then have greater purchasing power but, you’ll find yourself pretty much making an entirely Thatcherite argument: “A rising tide lifts all boats”.

Trump & Brexit are anti-establishment. Yes, yes, yes Farage & Trump are wealthy and very-fucking-wealthy people respectively but there’s no denying that the entire corporate world was horrified by the election results last year and spent billions trying to prevent them.

Says a man who has just got a job at a global bank

3 Likes

Yeah, sure. I’m a conservative.

You lefties are the ones who are supposed to be arguing against all this - but instead you’ve found yourselves being puppeteered to make the arguments that came straight from the mouth of the epitome of all you despise.

Pap did you not give Tramps my bio when he signed up, he thinks I’m a pinko?

Originally posted by @Rallyboy

Phil is 100% spot on there.

Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, even Tesla. Have been investing all revenue into new tech. Amazon has an insane turnover but runs at a loss. Most of these companies are investing all their profits into autonomous machines (self driving trucks/cars) AI and robotics. I’ve been in an autonomous Range Rover, it scares the crap out of you, then you get used to it.

Most manufacturing jobs in the next 10 years, including truck drivers/taxi drivers will be automated. Already many factory jobs are redundant due to technology. How society copes with these changes is pretty important. A national basic wage is already being tried in Norway. It will have to happen here.

Just saying … Also hyperlinked worked :smile:

3 Likes

Congrats on the hyperlink, Ted. Shame you have managed to attribute a quote to Rallyboy that is entirely fictitious.

as for the eno quote, it’s excellent. I agree with what he says. Shame nothing will change and we’re all doomed. The poor will starve, fight, flee and then come and get the rich. In the end it won’t matter. You’ll either die in your rags or in your silk kimono.

3 Likes

I’ll die in my kimono goddamnit

1 Like

What Eno quote?

1 Like

It’s my opinion

Oh. Are you not Brian Eno?

1 Like

Originally posted by @SaintBristol

What Eno quote?

Is is the “I like Eno, and there’s a lot of sense there” ? quote

That quote wasn’t fictictious either mate cos I just wrote it :slight_smile:

Jeez

I’m going back to posting music videos :lou_facepalm_2:

3 Likes

Originally posted by @SaintBristol

Originally posted by @Rallyboy

Phil is 100% spot on there.

Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, even Tesla. Have been investing all revenue into new tech. Amazon has an insane turnover but runs at a loss. Most of these companies are investing all their profits into autonomous machines (self driving trucks/cars) AI and robotics. I’ve been in an autonomous Range Rover, it scares the crap out of you, then you get used to it.

Most manufacturing jobs in the next 10 years, including truck drivers/taxi drivers will be automated. Already many factory jobs are redundant due to technology. How society copes with these changes is pretty important. A national basic wage is already being tried in Norway. It will have to happen here.

Basic wage or universal basic income?

A thought.

Reading my FB timeline it seems that there is a growing consensus in the kind of stuff that gets shared that tends to agree with Brian’s thoughts. We speculate on here about links to IS etc and inequality, yet to my mind none of the people I read stuff from are what I would call “Lefties” or even Greenies. In fact they come from many different Nations.

My SA pals are as agitated with abuse of Political Power (did not want to say corruption), Aussies go on about the morons running their place, hell, even the Finns are hacked off, so this passive groundswell of discontent provides an conundrum.

Do we feel this way and share this stuff because of Facebook? Is it Clattenbergs fault? Is he brain washing us?

Or do people actually go out and find this stuff and post it themselves and is this a real genteel “uprising”.

Are we all becoming Anarchists? Seriously? Jeez back in the day those guys were loonier than any Looney Lefties / CND Hippies. Have I (or even “We”) become so immune to Expense Scandals, Sex Scandals, Power Abuses, Corruption in so many Nations that we now start to feel a sympathy for those views?

Are we feeling Anti Globalisation? Is this a revolt against Walmart Corner Stores?

Does Globalisation actually SHARE wealth? Or in fact are we seeing Globalisation erode Western Wealth and place it in the hands of the rapidly rising Middle Classes in India, China and other “low cost labour states”?

Certainly I believe that there is a risk that the Middle Class will become “harmed” by the erosion of jobs. Afetr all, “Service Industry” still needs people to buy shit and if nobody has any money you get a collapse in consumer confidence globally and the 1% ain’t trickling it down.

In simple terms. Are our Grandkids Screwed?

3 Likes

I don’t, most supposed leftist people on here are in fact naïve Liberals, tories with a conscience or sort of.