If you take a look at recent history since the Second World War,
something really remarkable has happened.
First: human intelligence created two huge sledgehammers
Capable of
terminating our existence, or at least organized existence, both from the Second World War
One of them's familiar. In fact both are by now familiar
Second World War ended with the use of nuclear weapons
It was immediately obvious on August 6th 1945,
a day that I remember very well,
it was obvious that
soon technology would develop to the point where it would lead to terminal disaster.
The scientists certainly understood this
In 1947, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists inaugurated
its famous Doomsday Clock, you know, how close is the minute hand to midnight.
It started seven minutes to midnight
By 1953 it had moved to two minutes to midnight
and that was the year when the United States and Soviet Union exploded hydrogen bombs
But, it turns out, we now understand, that at the end of the Second World War the world
also entered into a new geological epoch. It's called the Anthropocene, the epoch in which
humans have a severe or in fact maybe disastrous impact on the environment
Moved again in 2015, again in 2016
Immediately after the Trump election, late January this year, the clock was moved again
to two and a half minutes to midnight - closest it's been since 53.
So there's the two
existential threats that we've created which might, in the case of a nuclear war, maybe wipe us out,
the case of environmental catastrophe, severe impact
Then a third thing happened. Beginning around the 70s,
human intelligence dedicated itself to
eliminating, or at least weakening, the main barrier against the threats -
it's called neoliberalism.
There was a transition at that period from
the period of what some people call regimented capitalism - 50s and 60s - the great growth period
egalitarian growth, a lot of advances in social justice and so on
That's sometimes called the Golden Age of modern capitalism.
That changed in the 70s and with the onset of the
Neoliberal era that we've been living in since
And if you ask yourself what this era is, it's crucial principle is
undermining mechanisms of social solidarity and mutual support and
popular engagement in determining policy.
It's not called that - what it's called is "freedom."
But "freedom" means subordination to the decisions of concentrated unaccountable private power.
That's what it means -
The institutions of governments or other kinds of association that could allow people to
participate in decision-making, those are systematically weakened.
Margaret Thatcher said it rather nicely in her
aphorism about "there is no society, only individuals"
she was actually, unconsciously no doubt, paraphrasing Marx
who, in his condemnation of the repression in France,
said the repression is turning society into a sack of potatoes -
just individuals, amorphous mass, can't act together, that was a condemnation.
For Thatcher, it's an ideal. And that's neoliberalism.
Well, what does that do?
The one barrier to the threat of destruction is an informed, engaged public
acting together to develop means to confront the threat and respond to it, and that's systematically weakened
Consciously. Back to the 1970s - we've probably talked about this -
there was a lot of elite discussion across the spectrum
about the danger of too much democracy and the need to
have what was called more moderation in democracy
for people to become more passive and apathetic
and not to disturb things too much, and that's what the neoliberal programs do.
So put it all together, and what do you have? A perfect storm.
