This is one of those “you bunch of bastards” moments.
Moments that the people on the right don’t want you to have.
It’s not that I’m against people having lots of money, or even a disparity in wealth. I get by just fine on what I have. But money is power, and the amount of money in the top 20% – hell, the top 1% – is enough to bend society and democracy and markets and business and media. And that’s dangerous.
In other news, a picture!
(h/t to Mark Whatmore for putting me on to this)
Props to the University of Bristol – I like seeing real scientists posed big questions. Knowledge in general, and science specifically, is inextricably linked to the power which is wielded in society. It can be more or less explicit in its link – the atomic bomb is an obvious example of scientific power in many ways. A different example is the ‘modern’ approach to agriculture. Knowledge and power play out in an enormously complicated global food web. It ranges from the most local level – the battle of managing a crop to maturation in an unstable environment with pests and other challenges – to the global market in food that most of us have only the faintest awareness of.
I’m about to run off to see the Mad Caddies, so I can’t elaborate further, but it’s a thought provoking question: scientific knowledge has been immensely positive AND negative so far; how can we push the balance towards the positive in the future? Can science actually save us?
Two years ago, I was packing my bags, having woken in the wake of a going-away party. I was soon to board the longest flight of my life, taking me to a new home and my first glimpse of squirrels.
Much has changed. I work in a job which sounds almost too wondrous to be true. Ensconced in the London Science Museum, I am working with spaceships and zombies and particle accelerators. My colleagues are as good a bunch as I could ask for and I have a world of intriguing events and people closer than ever. I’ve had the opportunity to work on the first international Green Steps course, and had an injection of motivation from that.
But the world has changed too. That time, two years ago, held political optimism for those on the left and the environmental movement. Strange but interesting coalitions were in power in Australia and the UK, and Obama hadn’t yet lost the House. Now, somehow, we’ve not just gone backward, but aggressively so. Politicians who are shamelessly selfish and shortsighted are not just visible, but thriving. And it’s against a backdrop of global warning signs, loud and clear, that societies and the planet are ready to boil over.
See that blue line? That’s unprecedented. And it matters. It matters a lot.
An important and deep part of me is not happy. How can I be when the world I love, the world I want to experience and share with the people in it, is being run even further off the track by the rich and powerful?
Maybe one day I’ll be able to make peace with that voice inside me. But for now, all I can do is draw motivation from it. So, I am using the anniversary of my leaving Australia to set a few goals. They sound a bit outlandish to me now, but I want to know if I can practice what I preach.
In the next two years, I will:
I was asked in an interview in May where I saw myself in 5 years. It was impossible for me to answer. Australia is probably the bookmakers’ favourite, at least in the country stakes. But beyond that? I can’t even hazard a guess. This is a post, a stone by the roadside, I’ll look back on to see how much has changed.
Maybe somewhere like this. Yeah, I can picture that lifestyle… shhh, not telling you where.
Oh, and see Samsara. It will blow your mind, reassemble it, shatter it, glue it back together, then vapourise it.
Do it now. Use Google and find out if it’s playing at a cinema near you, steel yourself, and keep your eyes and mind open. I’ll explain why later.
Two things that aroused my ire this week: traders at Barclays and the Texas GOP.
The second ones I knew were crazy, it just wasn’t crystal clear HOW crazy. The first I knew were cheating, sociopathic criminal scum, but it wasn’t clear that they were also shameless and arrogant.
I want to launch them from a cannon.
Let’s start with the funny one. The Texas GOP released their 2012 platform document. It’s in PDF form, which is a little annoying, but as far as I know it’s not a joke. Here’s some highlights that suggest otherwise:
We strongly support the immediate repeal of the Endangered Species Act. We believe the Environmental Protection Agency should be abolished.
We affirm that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit. Additionally, we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction or belief in traditional values. … We urge immediate repeal of the Hate Crimes Law. Until the Hate Crimes Law is totally repealed, we urge the Legislature to immediately remove the education curriculum mandate and the sexual orientation category in said Law.
We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
We unequivocally oppose the United States Senate’s ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
We support abolishing all federal agencies whose activities are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution; including the Departments of Education and Energy.
We support the immediate approval and construction of the Keystone XL and other pipelines that will reduce our reliance on imported oil and natural gas from unstable or unfriendly countries. We support immediate resumption of deep water drilling and production in the Gulf of Mexico. We support land drilling and production operations including hydraulic fracturing.
That’s not even including the stuff about religion, or returning to the gold standard, or abolishing income tax. Basically, they want children to be raised as mindless, subservient zombies, in a society where it’s OK to bash homos and rape the environment wholesale in the most damaging and profitable short-term way.
I repeat: they’re not joking.
Oh, and I missed one. The one about taking away voting rights for black people.
Then there was the Libor scandal. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, Google will take you to summaries of what happened. In my basic understanding, Libor is the London Interbank Offered Rate, basically an average of interest rates being offered by big banks in the City for certain periods of time (eg one month, three months). It informs the offered interest rate for many money-lending/trading organisations around the world. The banks in the City submit the interest rates they’re offering each day, and the figure is calculated from the average.
Barclays traders were revealed, via scandalously blunt and cavalier emails, to be requesting (and getting) the ‘submitters’ to just change their numbers, to drag the average up or down in their favour. Of course, Barclays are the ones who have been caught, but it’s probably global and industry-wide.
“Hi Guys, We got a big position in 3m libor for the next 3 days. Can we please keep the libor fixing at 5.39 for the next few days. It would really help. We do not want it to fix any higher than that. Tks a lot.” (September 13, 2006, Senior Trader in New York to Submitter)
The traders, in cahoots with the submitters, were blatantly manipulating what should have been a relatively straightforward and transparent number for their benefit. It’s immoral behaviour, showing a complete disregard for anything except swelling their own profit, with the law or other people being damned in the process. A corporate culture in which behaviour like this is not just acceptable, but celebrated and rewarded, is rotten to its core. It sickens me. I cannot wait for the finance sector to properly implode, and while I know many ordinary people will probably lose a lot in the process, having the finance industry dominating our political and economic system fills our society with a corrupt stench that even ‘record fines’ (amounting to a day or two’s profit) cannot mask.
I’m going to do some research into the banks on offer, and move my money to the one I suspect has the least to do with these things (perhaps the co-operative?). It’s a trivial amount of money, but I can’t stomach dealing with companies that employ monsters.
A genuine and unshakeable commitment to improving the lot of their constituents. Compassion for the underprivileged. Informed and interested in the developments in healthcare. Capable of making, and justifying, difficult ethical, financial, social and developmental decisions.
Voters who consider the needs of others, not just themselves, when they go to the polling booth. Voters who take the time to look at the policy proposals of different representatives, and more importantly, are willing to hold their personal representatives to account. Voters with a keen outlook for their future.
National success measured in a diverse way. International scrutiny not merely of GDP – an indicator which reflects well only on economies built to game the algorithm – but on individual welfare, on maintaining the environment they survive in, on transparency and innovation and adding real value to the way we live.
It sounds like a vision of heaven. What do we have now? Politicians being summoned to inquiries for shady dealings with the empires of press barons. Huge income inequalities, widening even as the economy contracts. International negotiations limply flailing away from any useful agreement to protect natural resources and environments the entire human population of Earth rely upon. We’re well on the road to hell. And not the fist-in-the-air AC/DC hell.
I went to Science Question Time on Monday evening, and the issue was “Growth”, or more precisely, the relationship between science and growth. I was impressed at the quality of the speakers, but was struck by what seemed to be bubbling below the surface of many of the comments. There was a deep dissatisfaction with the structure of business, government and finance. The ‘rules of the game’ suit those in suits, and even though science has typically played its hand pretty well, the problems it seeks to investigate and solve are being amplified by the very money needed to study them (check out the Storify of the event here – lots of good points).
There were two passages of discussion that really hit me. One made the point that the government – not private industry – should be the basis of support for the crazy ones.
The second key point was that science can deliver good information and outcomes, but not necessarily growth in the way it’s currently economically worshiped defined. What is needed, instead, is for our communities to speak out on the problems we need solved, with a strong voice. Then we need to shape how we value enterprise, business and science against those goals. We need new metrics, and those metrics cannot be based on the sheer quantity of monetary transactions.
Science is one of the best tools we have to discover more about our world and lay the groundwork for innovation. But it rolls along, one vehicle in a motorcade led by politicians lacking vision and integrity, towards checkpoints laid down by vested interests. Science Question Time firmed one thing in my mind: science is only as good as its context, and the current context is one I can’t accept. I want it to be better. You should too, because it can be. If we make it.
Here’s a simple question: if you could replace economic growth/GDP as a measure of national success with a single indicator, what would it be? Education? Health? Military? Research output? Art? Happiness?
And then the question I want you to really think about, and take with you, and talk about: what would the world look like in 10 years if we implemented your indicator with the same vigor and zeal we currently pursue growth? How do we get to the kind of world you want to live in? We must ask ourselves these questions, and try to answer them. Heaven is waiting for us to shape it.
