A lot of political scientists are now describing our global state of affairs as a "world system". Many disparate cultures across the world - whether they have chosen to or not - have adapted a Western system of organization, typified today as a neoliberal capitalist system. It is as if in concurrence with the zenith of British and then US power, the very socio-economic environment that every industrialized nation has to subsist in has taken on a certain quality, and in response, various nations arising from various histories have adapted this Western capitalist mode of organization, so as to harmonize with the greater and more powerful body of human activity that expands in power and across geographical space as empire spreads and sustains itself.
However, such a body of human activity occurs on a greater ecological backdrop, which itself is suffering from an increasingly dissonant relationship with the surrounding environment. And then such strains amplify tensions among competing organizational philosophies that have always been embedded within the hegemonic culture. You see increasing strains under the initial jubilant images of the rising powers of China, India, and Brazil. Just a year ago, everyone was talking about how these nations were blasting ahead, with China in particular expected to overtake the US in good time. And now each of these nations is experiencing its share of increasing social dissent and economic difficulty.
We are all sharing a dwindling pool of resources, and conducting our affairs in an increasingly toxic and unstable environment. Within a collective culture increasingly defined by anxiety and fear, each of our individual bodies and minds is burned up by the strains of stress. It is the organizational system itself and its related share of characteristics that is quickly becoming a detrimental habit.
This organizational style has exhausted itself, whatever exhaustion means on a mechanical level. The solution in the end will be something beyond the appearance of anything we know today of the mainstream. We can observe plenty of potential seeds of a new system taking root in the social body, these seeds identifiable both by the vitality of their essential justness and the resulting dissonance they display when interacting with the dominant social system.
The solution won't be more jobs, or more government regulation, or the weeding out of corruption, or the reigning in of special interests, or the election of a better president, or what have you. It will consist of the repeated exertion of what we find to be the good in our everyday experiences. It will come from the bottom, not the top.
This organizational style has exhausted itself, whatever exhaustion means on a mechanical level. The solution in the end will be something beyond the appearance of anything we know today of the mainstream. We can observe plenty of potential seeds of a new system taking root in the social body, these seeds identifiable both by the vitality of their essential justness and the resulting dissonance they display when interacting with the dominant social system.
The solution won't be more jobs, or more government regulation, or the weeding out of corruption, or the reigning in of special interests, or the election of a better president, or what have you. It will consist of the repeated exertion of what we find to be the good in our everyday experiences. It will come from the bottom, not the top.
