Conspiracy vs. emergence
I guess my main problem with the discussion at 15-SHM is the continuous reference to some sort of evil master plan: capitalism is scheming, engineering the financial crisis to reduce us all in poverty while appropriating an even larger share of the wealth for the 1%. This went unchallenged, with the exception of one Icelandic guy who suggested no one is really in control.
Here’s why I have problems with this attitude.
- It is plain wrong. Megascale phenomena (globalization, global warming, the rise of the car civilization...), to the best of my knowledge, are best explained as emergent processes: very many actors, each trying to get to their own goal within the constraints of the situation as they perceive it, recreate the situation. No one ever intended to heat the planet: people were just burning coal, because, you know, other people wanted to buy that energy. And those people, the buyers, they needed it to turn it into goods and servics that still other people wanted to buy, and so on. Global warming is quite elegantly framed as an an emergent property of the fossile-fuel economy. A similar argument can be developed for The Crisis, however defined.
- Like many conspiracy theories, it is politically so attractive that it is very hard not to suspect it to be intellectually dishonest. Hey, this is not our fault! It's the Cabal's fault! It's the Black Chamber. It's the witches in 17th century Europe. Hitler, a master political communicator, blamed hyperinflation and mass unemployment in Germany in the early 1930s on wealthy (Jewish) industrialists and bankers. This plays on very well known cognitive psychology results (check out Nobel laureates Daniel Kahnemann and Amos Tversky): we are hardwired to react to easy, powerful narratives. The conspiracy is one such narrative. It appeals to our ape brains and absolves us on all responsibilities: politically, a killer product. Leaders (or would-be leaders) must find it very difficult to resist to the temptation to use it. And, T, don't tell me there are not people who want to be leaders of 15-M, because there clearly are... though your movement does have antibodies against leaderism.
- It leads back to the traditional political system. Ok, so it's not us, it's them, right? Nothing we can do about it, short of a dystopian mass elimination of the 1% (1% of the world population = 70 million people = 12 Holocausts). So we need to exert indirect pressure on them: change the law/the tax laws/the Constitution/whatever. All potentially good things, but they imply building political infrastructure: parties, pressure groups, media etc. etc. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the idea, but most of what I heard in Barcelona pointed to an irreducible diversity of the movement with respect to traditional politics. I would contend that such a diversity is not really compatible with a "not our fault" kind of approach.
Which brings me to direct constructive action: people trying to hack away at the problem, one facet at a time. This is where my heart is, and why I think Edgeryders is important: it exposes the tentative solutions that young people are working on.
I remember that the Madrid unrest started out with a focus on the problem of housing. We have a killer piece on Edgeryders: Vinay, telling us about himself working in a city he can’t afford to live in. Do you think you and/or somebody from the movement would be interested in participating to the discussion? Any good solutions?