De-Coupling From Global Disaster

Looking at the news this morning anyone would be reviewing their actions to protect their living standards and their wealth. So far Angels have sold off United Kingdom property (not at the height of the boom, peaks and troughs are for professionals to hit, the upward slope is what to aim for), invested in agricultural land, exported most of our money into the eurozone, maximised eligibility for regional and national euro-funding in bringing marginal land back into production, developed an eco-house with solar fired heating and electricity, and captured and used its own water supply, set up a cash crop, and a garden for self sufficiency in most of what we eat. (The basis for these actions, the abandoned property left to fall down as marginal if not worthless in the brave new world of global development was fortunately still there).

All this is marked by a single characteristic: disengagement, decoupling from large and faceless service providers, and from financial systems that are out of any control. Which leaves also a huge area of our well being outside of our control. Have our pensions been compromised, all that foregone consumption so that we would be reasonably comfortable when we are old lost for good? Almost certainly yes. At best, what is paid will be devastated by inflation already established and accelerating to lira-like levels. Work till we drop is now the requirement.

Austerity is more bearable when cold and hunger can be diminished by personal hard work, but social disorder is more difficult to face. Not marauding bands but the social disorder of failing provision in essentially social areas: - public health, personal health care, (all of a sudden teeth, eyes, hearing, every kind of physical self-care takes on far greater importance);- transport suddenly slower and costing much more, requiring higher levels of organisation and planning (no more setting off for relatively close destinations for brief sojourns and ephemeral amusements, never mind 'holidaymaking' in distant and relatively undeveloped places without the means to get home in any sudden change of circumstances. No more unthinking reliance on someone else rectifying self-exposure to unnecessary and real danger by leaving home to all intents and purposes penniless and without survival skills). And there is, above all, the imperative provision for education and research to sustain a knowledge environment pleasant to live in and central to economic advancement and problem-solving. That cannot be provided individually.

Building personal exchange networks is now crucial. No more re-inventing of the self, the shedding of past failures and past shames by departure from neighbourhood or record in everyday life. Good standing within family, community, and in the world of work is indispensable: not the respect that is self-ascribed by the narrow rituals of childhood carried too far into the adulthood of gangs and criminality, but the other-ascribed status of being a person who can be trusted in every aspect of socioeconomic life. It is not for nothing that the most powerless among us, in our lifestyles deprived of self-determination, are the children and young adults knifing away in their self-assertion and attempts to control their surroundings, reinventing the wheel and missing the point (but they haven't been taught much in their prison-house schools).

Even if social identity and personal responsibility are restored to their cultural importance, what are we to do about the threat of war? Not war on someone else's territory which millions found they are powerless to prevent in the face of governance immune and wholly unresponsive to democratic will, but war on our own terrain. Few of us were awed but most of us were shocked, no horrified and outraged, by the unspeakable assault on the people of Iraq. And by the subsequent installation across the world of torture and false imprisonment as accepted usage by our own governments.

Extensions of that dreadful assault and all its consequences are threatened, in the struggle to continue impossible-to-sustain life styles by controlling planetary primary resources, in Russia's domain. In this we are in the hands of our national governments and at least Germany, France and Italy seem to have their heads on straight. We must not allow a strand of American policy to even risk precipitating a war on us. We have seen enough of that in the last century. And if it means that desert cities, personal yachts, private jets, as well as client voters and Ninja loans must be given up, then so be it.

It is from the United States, and from 'common' defence policies, and the European Union, that the great, global propaganda lie has come - the global warming, the need for global governance, the requirement to strengthen global institutions, the imposition of global 'democratic' values. Essentially this ideology removes our control from what happens to us.

The commonality of culture and the locality of sustaining economic and social relationships embodied in nation states is where our best interests lie. It could well be that some nation states need to have their borders redefined (the 19th and 20th -even 18th -century settlements are not set in stone), and more local independence asserted. At the same time, inter-relations between nation states will be made open to democratic discussion and agreement. This is as true of the United States of America as it is of Europe, which offers some explanation for the constant search for an external threat by the federal US government to solidify federal feeling, and the permanent underplaying of State individuality and interest in greater local determination. Notably, discussions of inter State relationships and a weaker US federation are few.

As the 'global' financial system comes down it shows up just how little democratic or personal control we have over our own resources (speaking as someone who has spent since 1997 trying to assert just that). Either people take local control over their local circumstance or we face being allocated what can be spared from the rich and the powerful, and it will not be enough.