2006: The Year of Oil Collapse?
There has been a theme to some of my recent blogs, although not wholly intentional. It is the pending collapse of the Amerikan economy and the effect it will have on the rest of the world. The data keeps coming - and so do the opinions. The above link leads to an in-depth article at Alternet and should be taken seriously whether you live in the dying empire of consumerism or not.
Admidst all the holiday programming on TV, there was a countdown of the most significant events of the last century. The 9.11 attacks, the creation of the world wide web - you name it. My own choice was not included.
In science-fiction there is an intruiging and popular theme that concerns the notion of parrallel universes or timelines. It is the idea that if, at a given point in our perception of linear time, events had taken a different course then our entire history would be different. Some contend that maybe such diversions really took place and that for each of these there exists a parallel universe. In choosing the most significant event I would apply this concept to my choice - in other words, what would life be like without that event.
In every scenario I've been drawn to events before my birth - mostly to the late 1930s and the Second World War. It would be easy eliminate the rise of Hitler from history or alternately muse upon a world where he rose and achieved his goals. In both instances, one has to question whether the US would have ever interfered in Europe or elsewhere, whether the state of Israel would ever have emerged and whether the Soviet Union would have risen to provide the only power-bloc to counter that of Amerika. It is the stuff of stories I will never write.
So my own choice of crucial event is actually the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Amerika, formerly a refuge for the disaffected of the world had pursued its own isolationist path until that moment. Then, for the first time, it was attacked on its own soil. Then, in shock, it entered the war. It also made sure everyone else knew it was in charge - largely by virtue of providing the manpower and resources needed by the ailing combat machine at work in Africa, Europe and Asia. Their involvement almost certainly helped win the war, but the help came at a very high price.
The war cost Amerikan lives and affected its economy, but unlike the fate of those on other continents, its infrastructure was barely dented. Amerikan soil remained very distant from the conflict itself. Post-war, the threat was over but the rest of the world had to rebuild itself and in the chaos, Amerika appointed itself as a supervisor of global affairs. It exported is wayward, mercenary culture around the planet, held in check only by the communist bloc and the highly ambiguous "cold war" with Russia and its satellites. So innocent and benevolant did it look that even the newly formed United nations adopted it as a safe home.
The decades that followed were a time of what we Brits call "one-up-manship" as the two superpowers taunted each other in the race for scientific advancement, idealogical prominence and military prowess. Every territory was ripe of colonisation and almost every subsequent conflict involved one or both of these two superpowers. By appealing to baser human instincts, namely greed and self-comfort, Amerika ultimately won the "cold war"and found itself dominant in world affairs, but without an "enemy" to justify continued imperial pursuits. Even the likes of "commie" China had adopted the idea of a market-driven economy and the planet's trade revolved around Amerika's almighty dollar.
By the end of the century there was a big hole in the super-structure. Capitalism was in firm control of the superficial side of world trade, but was (and is) dependent on an underlying hierarchy of winners and losers. In Amerika and other so-called "rich" nations, the increasing polarisation of those living in wealth and those living in poverty had become acute and is only hidden from view by ensuring a majority live in the illusion of "comfort". Television has become the usual opiate whilst cheap petrolium is offered as a kind of subsidised freedom. The myth of this false reality is maintained less by the political elite than the vast corporate interests that control them. For the increasingly disenfranchised and the ignorant, the same corporate mindset has repackaged mythology and religion to the point of a total distraction. Money flows, yet the continually recycled "capital" grows stale. "Buy" and "Sell" have become like binary code - the sole functions behind the ryhthm of western lifestyles. Profit is all as the civil and civic obligations of government are abandoned because they fail to "recycle" that treasured capital.
As capital is the new lifeblood of everything, so it needs to replenish itself. Having wasted the resources to regenerate its own, it is forced to become a "vampire" preying on others to survive. It pays little heed to the time when even its prey become extinct. This is Amerika today. It is also to a lesser or greater extent, the fate of all nations tied to the insidious web of Amerikan dependency. The imperial vampire will now engineer any excuse to drain the lifeblood of others - and when "enemies" are exhausted it will turn on its "friends". No wonder it want to hide the science that gives evidence to "survival of the fittest" - it is desparate to survive but unfit to do so.
So I return to Pearl Harbour. Without Amerika's intervention there is no doubting today's world would be a very different place indeed. Maybe one far worse than we can know. Yet it is worth considering what North America might have become. Unattacked it may well have purused its own course and grown into a society that better reflected the ideals expressed in its constitution. Without the cold war it may not have developed the vast military complex which costs it so much and wastes its resources. Without the Soviet Union and the state of Israel it may never have taken upon its the meddle too much in foreign affairs. Without the intent of cultural colonialism and military imperialism, it may not have wasted its huge continent-wide natural resources and may have developed a self-sustaining ecostructure. Without its involvement in WW2 it would not have the scientific pre-eminence it gained by providing a home for ex-Nazis and those in the later economic "brain drain" for the UK and elsewhere. Nor would it have gained dominion over technologies developed by others and simply stolen in the aftermath of war. Would we even be living in a world without nuclear weapons scattered around the globe?
Then again, maybe Amerika would not have been the nation that pioneered civil rights. Maybe mankind would not yet have set foot off this planet. Horror of horros, we may not even have had Rock & Roll. Too many things that actually form our known history, too many things we can never know. What is clear is that we have reached a time where the US needs to put its own house in order again. Until then, the rest of the world will increasingly seek to survive without it.
Later.
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