In The Gardens of Manchurian Global

 

I dont know if you've been keeping up on current events, but we're getting our asses kicked. - from the 1986 movie Aliens

I've recently finished reading an excellent book called The World Is Flat by New York Times star writer, Thomas L. Friedman. Friedman is a brilliant and insightful writer. He shines a light onto a lot of places and faces and shows us something practical to do with it.

For example, Friedman conjured up what he calls his Golden Arches Theory which "stipulated that when a country reached the level of economic development where it had a middle class big enough to support a network of McDonald's, it became a McDonald's country. And people in McDonald's countries didn't like to fight wars any more. They preferred to wait in line for burgers. While this was offered slightly tongue in cheek, the serious point I was trying to make was that as countries got woven into the fabric of global trade and rising living standards, which having a network of McDonald's franchises had come to symbolise, the cost of war for victor and vanquished became prohibitively high."
Friedman goes on to point out that no country to date, with McDonalds, has ever gone to war on another country that has McDonalds.

Then Friedman goes even further with his Dell Theory: "The Dell Theory stipulates: no two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, such as Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain, because people embedded in major global supply chains don't want to fight old-time wars any more."
He uses the example of India facing off to Pakistan (both nuclear armed) and then India backing off, when the elder statesmen got frantic calls from American companies who'd outsourced a lot of their operations to India. It's one thing to get business outsourced to you. Once you lose it, once the credibility is gone, it probably won't come back.

But for all Friedman's flair, and his clever writing, he fails to see that the vast majority of people in the world are poor, and disaffected.
He makes this comment, probably acknowledging this when he quotes Dell:

"If you are making money and being productive and raising your standard of living, you're not sitting around thinking, Who did this to us? or Why is our life so bad?"

There's something seriously wrong with this view, and it can best be found in the gardens of Manchurian Global. There's a scene in the movie (see picture above) where the Vice Presidents mother confronts a man who represents The Company, The Corporation, The Elite, The Moneyed. She tells him, "Your God is money," and he responds, "And yours isn't?"

No, what's really wrong is that even people who are working, who are being productive, are firstly unable to do both their jobs and the job of the government (which seems to be to trick them into giving up their wealth) and secondly, we are in a system which doesn't help the individual build up the community. We are in a system that enshrines the individual, or seems dedicated to fulfilling individual pursuits, but breaks down the community. I don't mean to suggest even that Middle Class individuals are supported. It only benefits the Corporations and the Masters of these Corporations.

At least you don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage. - Ripley, in Aliens.

The markets that allow Dell to function, and Airline fleets to fly the world, these are lubricated for the super rich, but the merely rich get snagged, and the poor continue to suffer. I'd like to be more specific on these points. If you'd like to verify them, just read up on President Bush's policies, or how the IMF works, read some Chomsky.

You might think that these criticisms of Friedman is just whining, but it's not. Friedman's book is subtitled A Brief History of the 21st Century. Very little scope goes into the exploration of Peak Oil. All his theories are based on the assumption that the world will continue to evolve on the stratum of cheap oil. It's so implicit to his theories that it's barely mentioned. It's like saying, in order to be healthy, we need to breathe. Yet without that, his whole construction crackles to the ground like a matchstick man on fire. He mentions that an Energy Crisis or a good old fashioned war will easily reverse what he calls the 'flattening" mechanisms of the world. He doesn't realise that both are already in high gear. What he calls Globalisation is a myth. It's an aberration. It's like a rainy season in temperate zone, or worse. It's a season, and in the case of fossil fuels, its not a season we will ever see again, based on the same underlying forces (eg cheap oil).

The efficiencies we've developed, also promote reverse efficiencies. The world is so thrown off balance, that the efficiencies (through supply chaining) that we've engineered into it will very quickly reverse engineer all the forces needed to bring balance back.
Many of these, unfortunately, are not friendly forces. Our fleets of aircraft, our subway grids, our streaming traffic, will provide remarkable portals for airborne diseases like H5N1 to decimate populations. These configurations, these networks are in place. So is H5N1. The disease is already deadly (we haven't seen so many birds die from it since records began), but right now it is developing its human to human efficiency. Its now also deadly in people. H5N1 can become efficient jumping between people if one simple thing happens. If a person gets H5N1 while already suffering from another kind of infectious flu. If that happens, both flus will recombine, exchange genetic material and emerge even deadlier. That can happen today.

From Aliens (1986): "that's it, game over man!"

The efficiencies produced by allowing machines to gorge cheap oil will became huge cracks and gaping holes. Supply lines will become dotted lines. Supermarkets and desert cities will become desert islands and ghost towns. Markets base don faraway markets will melt down, and local markets will mushroom up in their place (as long as there are local resources, like good soil, fresh water, and industrious workers - but not too many to feed.
The internet, this awesome recource, is also the disseminator of nuclear information, of terrorism, pornography and for feeding the bias of the person downloading his personal bias. We can expect, when social barriers begin to fray, that the mindset hewn by the internets overly sharp knives, will cut into communities. Peoples will be gouged apart based on deep indoctrinations, but some will be held together by them.

When do they send a rescue team?
17 days.
17 days; we ain't going to last 17 hours.


While all this is happening, the rich will try to pick up the pieces. They will buy companies and business their poorer rivals can no longer afford (given the higher energy expenses). There will undoubtably be a war, between the Have Lots and the Have Less And Less. We will see all of this unravel in our generation, in our lifetimes. Nuclear War, Peak Oil, Pandemic Diseases, Crisis after Crisis. When the one crisis is over we will find ourselves in the next one, even worse. Eventually we'll go from complaining about having no fuel for our cars, to crying for food for our children and ourselves.
While this is happening, the clouds over the garden will darken, and the black energy we have burnt, the million sunlight days on trees and leaves, will drift around us in the sky.

Ripley: These people are here to protect you....they're soldiers.
Newt: It won't make any difference.

The lightning and floodwaters will fall on rich and poor alike, and we will once again fight for our survival. And we will fight each other. May the best men and women win, to live for each other (and not themselves), and to be in better days than these.