Prologue
When I come to writing these blog posts, I don’t sit down
and say to myself, “Let’s talk about X today, that will get people interested”,
or at least not very recently. Often I’m sat on my bed, reading some
sensationalist column in The Guardian which makes out that humans being bad and
doing bad is something completely new, when I suddenly decide to document my
own novelty in thought and type away into this account of my own immaturity. This
is exactly what has happened in the last fifteen minutes. And so, here is
another one of these documentations, perhaps to be one day thrown in front of
me by a journalist on a mission to proscribe against those who speak against majority-dictated
voices, and for which I shall have to explain myself. So, what spoon shall I
use to stir the great cauldron of discontent today, you ask? Today, I am going
to write about power.
About stability
There seems to be a great myth which circulates in all four
corners of the world. It is one which has incited many tumultuous events that
have marked civilisations, and continues to do so this very day, where we
consider ourselves, even in financial crisis, the pinnacle of human
advancement. The myth dictates that, at some point in human history, there was
a “golden age”. It is an age where everyone, rich or poor, white or black, or
whatever extreme you wish to use, was happy and prosperous, and that it is our
job, as human beings, to recreate and then to supersede this period of supposed
equality, wealth and customs. This “golden age” has produced the most harrowing
events in human history. Why? It is because every single political group, moderate
and extreme, is unified by this one single desire and end, and it is the means
that are used to justify this outcome, that differ. Such equality among the
political groups has allowed the technological revolution, the improvement of
living conditions and the overall organisation of the human race to co-exist
with such depraved acts as the Holocaust, the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the
Irish potato famine and the brutal conquests of Genghis Khan, Alexander the
Great and other famous military masterminds in ancient times.
Thus, the pursuit of the “golden age” is like taking a high-risk
investment; the rewards may be plentiful, but so may the losses. Indeed, a
financial gamble in a recession, such as the one we undergo, is one to be
avoided if one takes the gamble completely blind and devoid of background and
information. Instead, we look for “stability”; we place our bets on something
reliable, and we accept that the results will not be as sweet, but that the
losses are much easier to bear. It is also something that is currently being
accepted in a wider sense within society, not just within the Western world but
globally, in a spirit of fear and, at the same time, of tolerance.
An example: parliamentary democracy suits the United Kingdom
well, in a balancing act of autocracy and popular tyranny. A federal
presidential republic suits the United States in a balancing act of democracy
and the acceptance of leadership. Suppose that we swap the systems around;
would the people of the United Kingdom like to have their prime minister become
president, or the people of the United States like to have a non-partisan
leader for a supposed goal of advancement? The answer would most likely be no.
Both systems are accepted as stable, and we see no reason to change it.
Although we look to where advancement may have been beneficial in hindsight,
such as where people argue that the alternative vote may have stopped the rise
of fringe parties, the role of stability is very rarely challenged.
At the same time, our opposition to alien forms of
governance of a country seems to be lessening. Since the world was awed by both
the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, and by the substantial growth of China as
a country through investment in infrastructure and business, our criticism of
the system known as the “people’s democratic dictatorship” has waned whilst
instability in Europe is on the increase. The traditional western point of
view, built on a correlation between capitalism and freedom, the title of
Milton Friedman’s book advocating a free market, does not understand how people
who are not allowed to express a dissenting voice against the government can
have a prosperous and more accessible middle-class, buy Gucci and D&G
dresses and handbags and Rolex watches, drive high-end European cars, and can
eat well for so little money. But all of these conundrums are dwarfed by the
fact that they remain loyal and patriotic despite a perceived heavy-handedness
of the government. It makes the western mind shriek “Does not compute”. The
fear created by the economic problems in the western world, combined with an
increased awareness of global events through new mediums of communication, have
meant that respect for foreign methods of governance have meant that such
methods have managed to survive. At the
same time, the “liberal interventionism” which succeeded in Sierra Leone and the
Balkans, has largely been shunned, especially after the failures of Iraq and
Afghanistan.
But this is not purely due to hard work on behalf of the
Chinese people. I do not deny, however, that they do work hard, for they work
harder than anyone west of the Urals. However, it is also due to, not in spite
of, a largely competent and pragmatic government in a post-ideological global
society. Thus, it is possible to subsidise those who continue to work on farms
or casual labours through a robust welfare system, funded by an urban
middle-class. Hunger for political change is much the same as those who are
physically starved, and each can be replaced. The French Revolution has proved
this, whereby a people who previously respected the aristocracy, upon food
shortages and conspicuous consumption, changed the political landscape of France
and then of Europe, leading to mass executions and discontent. Marshall Aid
succeeded at preventing revolution by funding the rebuilding of Western Europe,
contrary to the Soviet sphere of influence and the uprisings of 1956 and 1968. China
has learnt the lesson from previous western regimes, and for good reason; a
revolution in China by starved peasants would be a disaster for each of its 1
billion inhabitants, just as the 1970s have proved a factor for the disaster
that was the decline of British industry. Stability has to occur both on a
governmental level and on the ground. A stable society must have a people who
feel as if they belong not only by being fed, sheltered and clothed, but feel
as if they play a role. Indeed, the Scandinavian social democracies largely
fulfil that role, not least in comparison to the United States.
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