Why belief systems in temples, banks and sovereigns will doom 2015 to death by 15 conflicts
Looking forward to 2015 with something less than enthusiasm at the weekend, I jotted a few notes and came up with, oddly enough, 15 different dimensions of serious conflict on our little Earth. They were far from mutually exclusive: and they were all well capable of producing both mayhem and chaos. At a push, in fact, I was able to list them under three main headings:
The clash of belief systems
Finance and Economics
Culture, society, and freedoms
Growing clashes of belief and ideology
Islam v other religions
Japan v China
Oil obsession v post-oil research
US v Russia (which it still sees as USSR)
EU v rebel Sovereigns
The fruitless fight between socialists and neoliberals
Banks v Citizens
The US Dollar v an aternative bloc
Zirp v Welfare of the Old
Globalism v Nationalism v Communitarianism
Materialism v eclectic life fulfilment
Threats to our culture, freedoms, and social values
Deregulated media ownership v the Internet/’bloggers’
Surveillance v Privacy
Corporatocracy v Democracy
Controls on opinion v Liberty
Now putting them under three headings is what the structural functionalist Talcott Parsons would’ve done, but in reality their interdependence is plain to see. Just at random for starters:
An emphasis on material benefits leads to controlling corporacrats and the erosion of liberal democracy, but the inabilty of socilaists to look for new ideas makes them equally tribal…leading to controls on opinion suchas the Scots now want to introduce.
And
The US obsession with maintaining Dollar hegemony and access to oil leads to the old Russia v USA face-off.
Anyone who imagines that these intractably interwoven and increasingly ruthless ambitions in conflict can be deconstructed without unpleasantness is off with the fairies.
Happy New(ish) Year.
Related from yesterday at The Slog: the brass neck of pols using our own money to bamboozle us
The Slog 