Freedom of Expression

I have to start writing somewhere, and it might as well be here. I began this blog all those years ago in order to laugh at politics and politicos, and now it feels rather more like chronicling the Downfall of the Capitalist Empire. Perhaps I should be writing a lament, or (more my style really) a pithy epithet; what do I really know about politics and economics? Aren't those things just way too complicated for any "layperson" to understand? And who do I think I am anyway?

Well, if they are, it's because we've made them so. Nothing has fundamentally changed in the nature of the problems faced by humans living in a society, I believe, since we started writing stuff down 7,000 or so years ago. It hasn't changed because humans haven't; our laws have become more humane over time, generally, but they're all aimed at the same things still; the regulation of the conduct of individuals according to a consensus ethical framework, and the organisation of authority to enforce these laws, to collect and distribute public revenues and carry out functions considered either too large or too important to be left to individuals, such as the social services and defence of the realm. I concede that's simplistic, but you have to get some kind of handle on it; with reservations, that's my starting point.

So here we are at the start of a new millennium, and to sum up the situation briefly, Everything Sucks. It's all gone horribly wrong, and it's clear to most people, in Europe at least, that none of our mainstream political parties really knows wtf to do. Right and left, liberal and conservative, they all function within one paradigm of how society can and must be; to think outside the box is impossible for them, because they're a part of the box themselves. The more radical parties seem to have no new ideas either; anyone familiar with the history of Europe in the 20th century will, like me, be watching the rise of fascism in Greece with weary, sickening dread; we can't do this any more, people, we can't - it's mad, it's wrong, it doesn't work.

It seems to me that the next big idea could come from anyone, anywhere. This is the kind of political and economic climate that breeds dictators, true, but also new social philosophies; we may possibly achieve by necessity what social evolution clearly can't produce, a better society. And so I think we should consider what a "better" society would be, what is, ultimately, the point of humans living together, to define our aims. Only once those have been agreed we can consider the best ways to achieve those aims. What matters is to contribute to the debate.