Never before have as many people had access to education, food, clean water and modern comforts such as washing machines. Never before has starvation, war and disease been as absent from human affairs as they are now. The world is getting better and better, the future is bright - who has not in one way or another been exposed to this narrative during the last decade or so? And why would anyone want to question it? Indeed, what kind of cynicism would it be to deny the astounding success of the Late Liberal World Order in lifting millions and yet more millions out of degrading poverty and menial labour?
And yet, something does not seem right. While I should be careful to write off above-said statements as nothing more than a "narrative" - a cheap postmodernist (poststructuralist) trick sometimes employed to refrain from fact-checking - intuition and, indeed, facts do not completely harmonize with the above picture. What I question is not so much the first part of the claim - that the world has been improving significantly in material terms for many people around the world - as the latter part of it: that everything will indeed continue to improve, to the point that heaven-on-earth would eventually be realized on a global scale. Rather, looking back across the centuries, it seems indisputable that a great rise in living standards, despite an explosion of the human population in the world has indeed occurred - but that does not mean that it will continue forever. I would suggest something altogheter different: that a peak has at last been reached, and that we are now in for a downhill ride for the foreseeable future. If I were to somewhat arbitrarily set a year for when this downhill journey truly began, I would suggest that it be placed at the year 2014.
2014 was the year when the Late Liberal World Order truly began to unfold. It was the year that saw the overthrow of a democratically elected (if corrupt) government in Ukraine, leading to a new confrontation between Russia and "the West", lead by the USA. This was also the year when Russia and China truly found one another on the geopolitical stage, forming a formidable alliance (all but in name) to challenge the American hegemony.
(The formation of this alliance has not been given as much attention as it deserved in the Western press. To those who would like to read up on the subject I would recommend the article China-Russia Double Helix by Larchmonter445. Regardless of what you think of false flags operations and CIA involvement, the key to note here is what the author writes regarding the complementarity of China and Russia: "What one nation lacks, the other has").
The failure of the US to maintain itself at the top of the World Order has directly fuelled the rise of Trump and protectionism. Now we are in a new diplomatic environment globally, with bilateral deals taking precedent over multilateral agreements, strongmen coming to the fore in a great variety of countries while a few well-off liberals in the North and West are wondering what what everyone is complaining about, insisting that things are still getting "better and better".
Yet it is not only the uncertain future of Pax Americana that makes me question the recieved wisdom. 2014 was also the year that saw the explosion of ISIS/Daesh, part organization, part network, part global brand, which has now been rolled back in Syria and Iraq but not at all globally. Daesh is a symbol of "resistance" to the state of things, resistance in its most ugly and nihilistic form, but nonetheless. This movement, whatever its exact origins, also comes across as an expression of what might be termed the Arabic-Islamic crisis, which has come about for reasons both external and internal, and which now sees countries such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan and Yemen as failed states to a greater or lesser degree. This raises questions as to when, if ever, the liberal dream will be universally realized. And needless to say, the US and its allies have often played a significant role in destabilizing said countries. One might be forgiven for thinking that the American peace (Pax Americana) has unravelled into an equally farreaching American War (Bellum Americana).
Finally, we come to the question of the environment and the Earth's climate. After centuries of more and more earnestly following the dictum 'Greed is good', humanity is finally beginning to sow what it has reaped. One extremely hot summer, like the one we are experiencing now in Sweden and in fact throughout much of the world, does not prove anything of course - but it makes us realize that what the climatologists have been warning about for decades is finally starting to become apparent for all to see. And still it is merely a taste of what the future is expected to hold. It might be useful to remind the world's liberals, then, that those last few decades that have seen an unprecedented rise in living standards across the world have also seen an equally unprecedented rise in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/
https://www.co2.earth/
Many liberals seem surprisingly complacent about this. Two examples from my own country could serve as an illustration. The neoliberal thinker Johan Norberg recently released a book with the English title: Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. According to other reviewers (I confess I have not read it myself) this book did not even mention the state of the climate, however. Such a mind-boggling omission serves to make the whole book rather uninteresting and, in a sense, off-topic.
The other example concerns the much lauded doctor and statistician Hans Rosling, whose latest book Factfulness is now being donated by Bill Gates to American college graduates. I have great respect for Rosling (who passed away little over a year ago, by the way), and my criticism does not concern him directly so much as the way he has been received. For those who are unfamiliar with his work, it was focused (in his later years) on enlightening people in well-off countries that the "third world" does not look the way it did fifty years ago - people are rarely starving in Africa and mothers in Bangladesh do not have more than 2-3 children on average. As praiseworthy as this is, my impression is that it was caught on a little too quickly by well-off, well-meaning people who wanted to ensure themselves that the world was still getting "better and better" and that it will continue in that manner, regardless of the limits of the environment and other potential troublespots.
Ultimately, if we are in need of reassurance, we are certain to find people who can give us that. But perhaps this need in itself signals something about our growing uneasiness with the state of things: all is not quiet on the western front.
And yet, something does not seem right. While I should be careful to write off above-said statements as nothing more than a "narrative" - a cheap postmodernist (poststructuralist) trick sometimes employed to refrain from fact-checking - intuition and, indeed, facts do not completely harmonize with the above picture. What I question is not so much the first part of the claim - that the world has been improving significantly in material terms for many people around the world - as the latter part of it: that everything will indeed continue to improve, to the point that heaven-on-earth would eventually be realized on a global scale. Rather, looking back across the centuries, it seems indisputable that a great rise in living standards, despite an explosion of the human population in the world has indeed occurred - but that does not mean that it will continue forever. I would suggest something altogheter different: that a peak has at last been reached, and that we are now in for a downhill ride for the foreseeable future. If I were to somewhat arbitrarily set a year for when this downhill journey truly began, I would suggest that it be placed at the year 2014.
2014 was the year when the Late Liberal World Order truly began to unfold. It was the year that saw the overthrow of a democratically elected (if corrupt) government in Ukraine, leading to a new confrontation between Russia and "the West", lead by the USA. This was also the year when Russia and China truly found one another on the geopolitical stage, forming a formidable alliance (all but in name) to challenge the American hegemony.
(The formation of this alliance has not been given as much attention as it deserved in the Western press. To those who would like to read up on the subject I would recommend the article China-Russia Double Helix by Larchmonter445. Regardless of what you think of false flags operations and CIA involvement, the key to note here is what the author writes regarding the complementarity of China and Russia: "What one nation lacks, the other has").
The failure of the US to maintain itself at the top of the World Order has directly fuelled the rise of Trump and protectionism. Now we are in a new diplomatic environment globally, with bilateral deals taking precedent over multilateral agreements, strongmen coming to the fore in a great variety of countries while a few well-off liberals in the North and West are wondering what what everyone is complaining about, insisting that things are still getting "better and better".
Yet it is not only the uncertain future of Pax Americana that makes me question the recieved wisdom. 2014 was also the year that saw the explosion of ISIS/Daesh, part organization, part network, part global brand, which has now been rolled back in Syria and Iraq but not at all globally. Daesh is a symbol of "resistance" to the state of things, resistance in its most ugly and nihilistic form, but nonetheless. This movement, whatever its exact origins, also comes across as an expression of what might be termed the Arabic-Islamic crisis, which has come about for reasons both external and internal, and which now sees countries such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan and Yemen as failed states to a greater or lesser degree. This raises questions as to when, if ever, the liberal dream will be universally realized. And needless to say, the US and its allies have often played a significant role in destabilizing said countries. One might be forgiven for thinking that the American peace (Pax Americana) has unravelled into an equally farreaching American War (Bellum Americana).
Finally, we come to the question of the environment and the Earth's climate. After centuries of more and more earnestly following the dictum 'Greed is good', humanity is finally beginning to sow what it has reaped. One extremely hot summer, like the one we are experiencing now in Sweden and in fact throughout much of the world, does not prove anything of course - but it makes us realize that what the climatologists have been warning about for decades is finally starting to become apparent for all to see. And still it is merely a taste of what the future is expected to hold. It might be useful to remind the world's liberals, then, that those last few decades that have seen an unprecedented rise in living standards across the world have also seen an equally unprecedented rise in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/
https://www.co2.earth/
Many liberals seem surprisingly complacent about this. Two examples from my own country could serve as an illustration. The neoliberal thinker Johan Norberg recently released a book with the English title: Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. According to other reviewers (I confess I have not read it myself) this book did not even mention the state of the climate, however. Such a mind-boggling omission serves to make the whole book rather uninteresting and, in a sense, off-topic.
The other example concerns the much lauded doctor and statistician Hans Rosling, whose latest book Factfulness is now being donated by Bill Gates to American college graduates. I have great respect for Rosling (who passed away little over a year ago, by the way), and my criticism does not concern him directly so much as the way he has been received. For those who are unfamiliar with his work, it was focused (in his later years) on enlightening people in well-off countries that the "third world" does not look the way it did fifty years ago - people are rarely starving in Africa and mothers in Bangladesh do not have more than 2-3 children on average. As praiseworthy as this is, my impression is that it was caught on a little too quickly by well-off, well-meaning people who wanted to ensure themselves that the world was still getting "better and better" and that it will continue in that manner, regardless of the limits of the environment and other potential troublespots.
Ultimately, if we are in need of reassurance, we are certain to find people who can give us that. But perhaps this need in itself signals something about our growing uneasiness with the state of things: all is not quiet on the western front.
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