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World Orders - An Idea Project, by Ed WhitfieldNearing the end of the eighteenth century there was what is known as the Age of Enlightenment. The French Republic and the United States of America had just been born out of a revolution lead by rationalists. A wealth of new literature had been produced throughout the eighteenth century. Volumes of scientific, empirical information, a new way of looking at the world. Dictionaries, encyclopaedias, great volumes of economic theory: how do nations acquire wealth? The revolution was lead by the forbearers of the age of enlightenment against the old order: god, the pope and king. Their days were up as 'the people!', through knowledge, 'enlightenment', now knew principals and facts about the world that had the supernatural authority over it running with their demonic tails between their legs, their harps tucked under their wings as their halos had fizzled into disrepute in the face of these new facts. Yet, this scientific knowledge only seemed to create a new elite. Now that the people had attained what was rightfully theirs, by god, excuse me, by empirical-ness they were going to run it properly. And so the vast economic theory, contemptuous of the mercantile guilds of yore, set about creating the New World Order. Replacing god with the free market, the clergy with Adam Smiths School of classical economics and the king with institutions that spent the next forever regulating the system and laying down taxes upon the people. The 'enlightened' claimed that the king was merely a 'lackey and errand boy for the whoremaster in Rome'. Yet it is quite obvious to see that over the next two centuries the 'democratic' governments in his, the kings, replacement were / are at the beck and call of the corporate elites that have developed out of those who won the land out of anarchic, socialist and atheist ideals. But megalomania got the better of them and with this wealth of literature they built the framework for modern society. They literarily 'wrote' our reality. They created a new falsity, a new lie! A new hoax to fool the people. The truth about the revolutions of the late seventeen hundreds is thus: the foundations of the society we now stand upon are just as fragile, just as breakable, bendable, disprovable as the foundations it replaced. For it smashed the old order out of spite of the exploitation of the people who laboured upon it and the contradictions it heralded. And now here we stand upon foundations just as exploitative, if not more so! And the apparent contradictions will soon, one day, grow momentous enough to become apparent, contagious and hence revolution will follow. It is obvious to see what is needed in order to smash a reality and create a new one. It is quite simple. The difficulty is in creating a reality of worth, a reality that cannot be countered. A reality where every one person is autonomous. A reality where everyone is equal. Today's revolutionaries are screaming at the authorities for the wrongs they are doing. What the rationalists did is point out the inherent contradictions. But it was not at this point that they burned the Bastille down. After pointing out the inherent contradictions they wrote their own reality. Through thinking and studying, through schools of collective thought they developed their reality and went about achieving it. It's all there for us to learn from. The difficulty I was talking about before was in avoiding exploitative kinks in the new reality. It was obvious where these lay in the oh-so enlightened ones. It was where they replaced god with the market system, the clergy with their own elite circles, the kings with 'democratic' governments who have now come to only represent the interests of the wealthy. Now, what could go wrong with the aspirations above, of autonomous beings, of collected support for all if we held the world and eco-system (life support system) as our god? The beings which roam its surface, from fly to man as our clergy, spreading the word of life so eloquently? And ourselves? Ourselves as the king, for who better to serve, once everything is settled but yourself. Forget the New World Order. Let's create the True World Order! This True World Order does not imply an actual order but is merely a play on the phrases New World Order and Old World Order. But I do believe that there is a massive potential within what has been labeled the 'left'. But it seems that people who see alternatives to the current order are in huge disarray. There is no unity, no force strong enough to oppose the current orders. And so possibly the best way to tackle this is for the individual to go away and think about the contradictions they feel are present within the world order and then maybe come together with people around them that hold similar views and to begin discussing these views, thrashing them out in arguments until conclusions are reached and the group are on a more common level of thinking. Of course they will all hold their original views but now they may count themselves as a group that understand each other and may help one another to reach one another's goals. I don't believe that people being called to protests or meetings where a few, selected speakers waffle on, will create a movement strong and unified enough to counter the present world order. Of course I don't wish to topple such orders for my own need to control, own or dominate. When I say 'counter the present world order' I mean to get rid of any such order, as in to get rid of the words power, control, authority from our languages, for such concepts not to exist so that we can maybe someday live full lives of our own, full autonomous choice. You may ask how can a group of people be a strong enough force? Well there is nothing stopping that group to go on and argue their points with other, similar groups, thus creating networks. And these networks may connect, someday, over the whole world. A worldwide network, made up of groups made up of individuals and their wishes, coming to the group where they all help one another to achieve those wishes. It would certainly be a network of common understanding and strong conviction and, therefore, high determination. I call it the 'True World Order' because I believe, not in a fundamental truth that lies at the core of the earth, just waiting to be found, but that a healthy world needs healthy life and the mass consumption / destruction of our present times seems to be choking the life out of us, the planet and everything around us. We are very anthropocentric, meaning that we, in general, have very little respect for any other type of life, that all life is there to serve us, and no matter how much of it we consume / destroy we will live long and prosper. Well, it seems obvious to me that this attitude is going to have us running with our demonic tails between our legs, like the fictitious supernatural lords of the Old World Order, as, if we don't do something now I believe the world and nature itself will revolt. I don't mean Animal Farm, but I am referring to the rise in ecological disasters. With the concept of the 'True World Order' in mind, I call for a new respect for life, all forms of life. To recognise that, in nature, as we have learned through science, we are all made of the very same material. Within our bodies there are atoms that have mingled with moon dust and asteroids. The bricks in your own building are, atomically speaking, related to you. It is therefore essential that all things deserve respect. I call for the loose 'left', or anyone that has anything to say, to begin drawing up their own dictionaries and encyclopaedias as they did in France and Europe, before the revolution. All the feelings we feel, the horrors and shock we experience at every corner our leaders seems to take, all of this must be documented. To then unify with these new knowledge bases. We can no longer bitch and complain, like teenagers, about the wrongs in the world. It is time to begin to draw our own reality, and when we are confident that the manifest of our abstract feelings are concrete enough we then shall have something to plant in the rubble of what will then be left of the Last World Order as we step into a world of balance and peace. -- Ed Whitfield, March 2004 Back to An Idea Project Index More of Ed's Opinion Columns |
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