The USA, and the world, faces a situation where the powers that be are inextricably woven into the fabric of our civilization. The degree of control they exercise is broad and deep, but the extent of it is largely imperceptible. Like fish in water, we swim through a social medium of hierarchy, power and coercive control without even recognizing it.
For those with a taste for the big picture, here's what I'm talking about. It's an excerpt from an article entitled
Political Will, Political Won't. I wrote it initially about the global failure to address environmental concerns, but it's even more applicable to the financial crisis.
Guardian Institutions
As always happens with hierarchies, power flows uphill. Along with it go the perquisites of power, the most important being the right to higher levels of material abundance than those lower in the pecking order. To ensure that this comfortable situation is maintained, part of the accumulated social power is used to protect the situation. This is done by strongly defending the three preconditions set out above. The people to whom this power flowed quickly realized that the status quo is most easily maintained if the rest of the community sees this situation as the only possible way life can work, and any suggestions to the contrary are the result of either some nefarious agenda or outright insanity.
Over time an interlocking system of guardian institutions grew up to protect and defend the three key ideas of ownership, growth and hierarchy:
* Economic and financial institutions cooperate with business and industry to set the value of work and control the money supply (thereby controlling access to food). In this role it doesn't make any difference whether an economy is capitalist, socialist or communist. The core beliefs it guards are always the same: ownership and growth.
* Educational institutions teach successive generations how the system works, giving them the tools to integrate into it and manipulate it, while at the same time training them to see this as the only possible way the world can work.
* Communications media reinforce this message by enlisting people in the growth paradigm. They do this both through overt messages like advertising and covert messages embedded in the story lines of entertainment.
* Religious institutions (as distinct from the religions they purport to enshrine) are primarily normative social structures. Many incorporate an overt message that we should be content with things as they are. There are often injunctions against questioning authority, as all authority is seen to devolve from the supernatural – just as it did for the shamans of the early agricultural era.
* Legal institutions enforce the norms of ownership and hierarchy in ways too numerous to count. These range from the protection of privilege (one law for the rich, one for the poor) to the preferential defense of property rights over human rights.
* Political institutions sit at the tip of the pyramid. Political institutions encode, enshrine and manage the application of social power. Politics is the institution that legitimizes all the others. Because of its unique ability to make laws and its access to legalized violence to defend those laws, politics is the fullest expression of the power hierarchy of modern civilization.
Politics is the problem, not the solution
Politics, regardless of party or ideology, is part of the problem and can never be part of the solution. While it may be easier for the average person to live under the rule of a more humane parcel of rogues, at its heart politics is the primary guardian institution of modern civilization. The role of all politics is to manage power, and power is always managed for the benefit of the holders of power. It doesn't matter whether the power managers are Democrats, Republicans, Tories, Grits, Social Democrats, Communists or a military junta. They all fulfill the same role in service of the same beneficiaries.
In order to fulfill that role they unite with the other guardian institutions – the economic, industrial, legal, religious, educational and communications organizations. Together they create, maintain and guard a noetic milieu (a globalized intuitive, non-rational consciousness) in which any values that challenge the two fundamental preconditions to modern civilization are seen as incomprehensible, self-evidently absurd, dangerous or even insane. Since the primary value system these guardians protect is the paradigm of continuous material growth, the most dangerous of all radical ideas are any proposals to limit, halt or reverse that growth.
The guardian institutions are so firmly embedded in our global culture that it is ultimately fruitless to try and remove them from power by either direct or indirect confrontation. The penalties for trying this are severe and ruthlessly applied.
Conclusion
In light of this rather dismal assessment, is there any hope for a return to a sustainable, egalitarian, interconnected, considerate and just civilization? I strongly believe that there is, but getting there will be neither sure nor easy.
The institutions that stand between us and such a future are trapped by their dependence on the very paradigm they are sworn to protect. They defend the belief that permanent material growth is natural, possible and inevitable. While they defend that belief with laws, guns and television, ultimately their power comes from people who accept that premise. If people stop believing that such growth is possible the institutions' power declines, no matter how many defense mechanisms they engage. If growth falters, the people lose faith and the institutions crack and crumble.
Look back at the list of wicked problems. Every single one of them is the result of our growth encountering limits. While we may be able to figure out ways to temporarily circumvent some of these limits, the pattern is now clear. The growth of modern civilization is slowing down, and is even showing evidence of coming to a halt. For the guardian institutions that depend on growth for their very survival, this is like a diagnosis of terminal cancer.
What that means is that our guardian institutions will inevitably start losing their monolithic top-down power. This dis-integration will leave "cracks in the sidewalk of civilization". And just as grass grows through cracks in real concrete, small communities and individuals will start to appear through the metaphorical concrete of our industrial civilization.
No one can predict when, where or how the dis-integration will appear. It will take different forms in different places. The response of the guardians will probably be violently draconian in most cases. But there are places where communities have already formed in anticipation of such an opportunity. Like "Gaia's antibodies" they will work to heal the wounds, widen the cracks, and let the sunshine and fresh air revitalize the hidden earth. As the seed stock of the next phase of civilization they will spread their values on the wind.
I don't think we should ever stop pushing, but I do think that we should be realistic about our situation. If we are recognize the realities around us, we are more likely to find ways to shift them -- ways that are more effective than trying to battle an entrenched and well-organized enemy on its home turf by its own rules.
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