Disordered World, page 6
In order to be able to impose such restrictive measures, which would demand serious sacrifices from every nation and every individual, there would have to be a major global step-change. There are no signs that this is imminent.
A similar discrepancy is apparent when it comes to the challenges posed by human diversity.
Today, with every culture daily confronting others and every identity experiencing the need for virulent self-affirmation, and every country and city having to organise a delicate coexistence, the question is not whether our religious, ethnic and cultural prejudices are stronger or weaker than those of previous generations; it is whether we will be capable of stopping our societies from drifting towards violence, fanaticism and chaos.
That is the situation in numerous regions of the world. The case of minorities in Iraq and the Middle East is not unique, though it has offered the most telling example in the first years of this century. If we turn out to be unable to ensure the survival of communities that have existed for centuries, the way we handle human diversity will have been proven deficient and inadequate.
That does not mean that in the past we were wiser, more attentive, tolerant, magnanimous or adept. A glance at a few history books is enough to show that there have always been bloodthirsty rulers, greedy despots, devastating invasions, pogroms, massacres and monstrous attempts at extermination. If some communities nonetheless survived century after century, it was because their fate was mainly linked to local vicissitudes and was not constantly affected by all the events on the planet.
When a serious incident took place in a village, it often took weeks for the rest of the country to hear of it, which limited its repercussions. Today the opposite is true: a clumsy pronouncement made at noon can serve as the pretext for slaughter that same evening ten thousand kilometres away. Sometimes it is a false rumour spread maliciously or through a misunderstanding which sparks violence. By the time the truth comes out, it is already too late: the bodies are piled up in the streets. I have in mind specific events that took place in the past few years, not just in Iraq but also in Indonesia, Egypt, Lebanon, India, Nigeria, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Some people may object that this is just a normal consequence of the evolution of the world. To which I would say, yes and no. The entanglement of men and conflicts is indeed natural a consequence of progress in communications. But what we have the right to deplore and denounce is that this technological advance has not been accompanied by an awareness that permits the preservation of peoples pitched against their will into the maelstrom of history.
What is at issue is the gulf that is opening up between our rapid material evolution, which brings us closer together every day, and our too slow moral evolution, which does not allow us to face the tragic consequences of our shrinking world. Of course, material progress cannot and should not be slowed. It is our moral evolution which must be considerably speeded up. It urgently needs to be raised to the level of our technological evolution, which demands a real revolution in attitudes.
I shall return later at greater length to the question of how we manage diversity as well as to climate change and our dilemmas in this crucial area. Here, I would like to focus for a moment on the turbulence in the economic and financial sector, in which we can see the same disparity between the scale of the problems which assail us and our feeble ability to resolve them.
Here, too, if it were a question of working out whether we will be able to act and think together better than in the past to mobilise emergency funds, the answer would certainly be yes. As soon as a crisis occurs, measures are taken, and although one could question their effectiveness and direction, they often enable some semblance of order to be restored.
But however much faith we place in leaders who meet in groups of two, seven, eight or twenty, with their hosts of competent advisers and reassuring press conferences, we still have to admit that every shock to the system is generally followed by another, more serious one. And this gives the impression that the previous response must have been inadequate.
After a certain number of slumps, one comes to the inevitable conclusion that this disparity is due not to misjudgements, but to the fact that the global economic system is more and more impervious to control. This is a failing which cannot be ascribed to a single cause, but it is certainly in part explained by a characteristic of our time which can be seen in numerous other fields: the fact that problems can only be solved by thinking globally, as though the world were a single, plural nation, whereas our political, legal and mental structures constrain us to think and act according to our specific interests — those of our states, electorate, businesses and national finances. Every government is inclined to think that what is good for it is good for everyone else. And, even if it is sufficiently clear-sighted to realise that this is not always the case, and even if some of its policies — protectionism, quantitative easing, discriminatory legislation and currency manipulation — have a negative impact on the rest of the world, it will nonetheless suit itself in its attempts to escape from stagnation. The only limit on the sacrosanct selfishness of nations is the necessity to avoid the collapse of the whole system.
This is a new kind of balance of terror which has been established, notably between the Chinese and the Americans — ‘If you try to ruin me, I’ll drag you down with me.’ It is a risky game that leaves the planet at the mercy of a slip-up, and is no substitute for true solidarity.
Equally worrying is the fact that the economic turbulence that we see today has its origin in multiple types of disorder which affect the world and which come from both inside and outside the financial sector. Thus there are — alongside the data which allow the prediction that one year will see an economic slowdown and the next an upturn — many other factors whose effects cannot be reasonably predicted.
For example, extreme fluctuations in oil prices are due in part to speculation, but they are also influenced by the growing needs of the great nations of the South, and by political uncertainty in regions where oil is produced and across which it is transported — such as the Middle East, Nigeria, the Sahara, the Black Sea and the former Soviet Union — as well as several other factors. In order to control these fluctuations and prevent them from destabilising the wider economy, measures would probably have to be taken to discourage speculation at a global level. But there would also have to be concerted and equitable management of the planet’s resources, changes in production and consumption methods, an end to the after-effects of the Cold War in improved relations between Russia and the West, and solutions found to a range of regional conflicts. That gives some indication of the scale of the problem, which demands a high degree of active solidarity between nations and which would take decades to achieve. Meanwhile the turbulence is affecting us today.
As soon as a government tries to tackle a problem, it finds that this problem is linked to a hundred others which belong to different areas and escape its influence. Whether it is fighting against recession, inflation and unemployment, or pollution, drugs, pandemics or urban violence, it inevitably comes up against problems of all sorts — geopolitical, sociological, sanitary, cultural or moral — which originate in all corners of the planet; problems which absolutely have to be solved if it is to have any chance of success, but on which it can get little or no purchase.
In economics it has long been acknowledged as a matter of common sense that if everyone acts according to his own interests, the sum of those actions will be beneficial to the general good. Selfishness would thus be paradoxically the truest form of altruism. According to Adam Smith, every individual ‘by pursuing his own interest … frequently provokes that of the society more effectually then when he really intends to promote it.’ Writing in the eighteenth century, he also talked of an ‘invisible hand’ which would providentially harmonise the economic machine without the need for any authority to intervene. It is a highly controversial vision, of course, but not one that can be easily dismissed, given that it is at the heart of the most successful economic system in human history.
What we do not yet know is whether this ‘invisible’ hand is still capable of operating today, if it is able to ‘lubricate’ a global market economy, combining societies with different laws and innumerable individuals worldwide acting in unforeseeable ways as it used to be able to do for a few countries in the West. It is probable in any case that no invisible hand could prevent the growing wealth of nations weighing heavily on the resources of the planet or polluting the atmosphere, but neither is it certain that the visible hands of our leaders are any better equipped to manage our global realities.
In the space of a few years we have seen two opposing belief systems thoroughly discredited. First, state power was stigmatised. In the wake of the failure of the Soviet system, all forms of planned economy seemed like heresy, even to some socialists. The laws of the market were deemed to be wiser, more effective and more rational. Almost everything was reckoned to be ripe for privatisation: health care, pensions, prisons and even, for the neo-conservatives in the White House, defence. The idea that the state had a duty to assure the well-being of its citizens was challenged, often implicitly, but sometimes explicitly. The principle of equality even came to be considered obsolete, a relic of a bygone age. There was felt to be no reason to be ashamed of flaunting disparities in wealth.
But the pendulum had swung too far and struck the wall, which sent it back in the opposite direction. Now belief in the infallibility of the market has been stigmatised. The virtues of the role of the state have been rediscovered. There have even been massive nationalisations, despite some distaste at using that word. Certainties which have been constantly trumpeted for three decades have been shaken and a radical reappraisal is under way, which will affect the political, social and economic spheres and will probably go far beyond that. How can a major financial crisis be resolved without attacking the crisis of confidence that accompanies it, the distortion in the scale of values, the loss of moral credibility of leaders, states, companies, institutions and those who are supposed to regulate them?
One of the most striking images from the first decade of this century was of Alan Greenspan, former director of the Federal Reserve Board, testifying to a congressional committee in October 2008. Though he denied that the decisions he had taken, or failed to take, in the course of his eighteen-year reign could have been responsible for the cataclysm in the US sub-prime market and the ensuing global turbulence, he admitted that he was in a state of ‘shocked disbelief’. He was convinced, he said, that lenders would never act in a manner which would compromise the interests of their own shareholders. ‘This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year.’
I suppose that those who doubt the inherent wisdom of the mechanisms of the market will have responded to these words with sarcasm. But what Greenspan expressed was not just the disappointment of a misguided conservative. If his remorse strikes me as significant, even touching, it is because it marks the end of a period in which the behaviour of economic agents had coherence and decency and obeyed certain rules; in which big-spending, predatory and fraudulent leaders were rare; and in which one could depend on certain values and instantly recognise healthy businesses.
Without seeing earlier times — which had their share of malpractice and crises — through rose-tinted spectacles, it has to be admitted that there has never been a period quite like our own in which those who are responsible for national economies can no longer follow the acrobatic manipulations of the financial whizz kids, and in which operators who handle billions have no knowledge of political economy or the least concern about the repercussions of their actions on businesses, workers, or their own relatives and friends, without even mentioning the collective good.
It is easy to understand how old sages might become disenchanted. Whether they incline towards interventionism or laissez-faire, the doctors of the economy report disappointing results for their tried and tested therapies, as though they found themselves in front of a different patient from the one they treated the day before.
Chapter 10
But this economic malaise may be just one aspect of a bigger, more complex phenomenon that affects all human societies without exception, rich or poor, weak or powerful, a phenomenon we still refer to as the ‘acceleration of history’ but which goes far beyond what that meant last century. Perhaps it would be preferable to use another concept which better reflects the pace of change today: instantaneity. For, as so many examples show us every day, all world events now unfold in real time before the eyes of the whole of humanity.
It is no longer simply a matter of the pattern that has been imprinted on history for a long time — the accelerating movement of peoples, goods, images and ideas creating the impression of a shrinking world. We have got used to that over time. But the tendency became considerably more pronounced in the final years of the twentieth century, to the extent that one could say the phenomenon had changed its nature with the take-off of the internet, the ubiquity of email and the construction of the worldwide web, as with the development of some other means of instant communication such as the mobile phone, which established instant links between people wherever they were, abolishing distance, reducing reaction times to nothing, amplifying the impact of events; and as a result increasing the speed at which they unfold.
That probably explains how the considerable upheavals, which in other centuries would have taken decades to unfold, now happen in the space of a few years or even months — for both better and worse. The first example that comes to mind is the uprooting in the space of a few years of cultures which had survived for millennia; but one could also think of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the expansion of the European Union, the growth of India and China, the rise of Barack Obama and a thousand other dramatic events.
Clearly the twenty-first century has begun in a mental atmosphere perceptibly different from any that humanity has known previously. It is a fascinating but dangerous change. To anyone interested in progress, the web today opens limitless perspectives: instead of just reading your local daily paper, you can look at the whole world’s press while drinking your morning coffee at home, and especially if you read English, given that innumerable papers — in Germany, Japan, China, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Kuwait, Russia, etc — now publish an online edition in that language. For my part, I could lose myself in them for days on end without getting tired, in a state of amazement and the feeling of fulfilling a dream.
In Lebanon in my childhood I used to read all of the local press every morning. My father was editor of a daily paper and out of courtesy would send a copy of it to his colleagues on other papers, who would reciprocate by sending him theirs. ‘Which one should I believe?’ I asked him one day, pointing at the pile. Without interrupting his reading, he answered, ‘None of them and all of them. None of them will tell you the whole truth, but each of them will give you its own version of it. If you read them all, and are able to exercise discrimination, you’ll understand the essential.’ My father did the same thing with radio stations: first the BBC, then Lebanese radio, then Cairo, followed by the Arabic-language broadcasts from Israeli radio; sometimes also Radio Damascus, Voice of America, Radio Amman or Radio Baghdad. By the time he had drained his coffee pot, he felt sufficiently well informed.
Often I think of the joy he would have felt if he could have experienced our era. There is no need to be the editor of a newspaper to receive all your country’s media and that of the whole world at home, much of it free of charge. Anyone who wants to have a relevant, balanced, all-embracing view of what is really going on in the world has all they need at their fingertips.
But not everyone makes such use of the tools at their disposal. Not everyone wants to form a considered opinion. It is often the obstacle of language which prevents them from broadening the range of voices they listen to. But there is also an attitude of mind which is very common in all nations, which means that only a small minority feels the desire to hear what others are saying; many people make do with the version that flatters their own views.
For every person who navigates from one cultural universe to another with their eyes wide open, for every person who goes happily from the Al-Jazeera site to that of Haaretz, and from the Washington Post to the Iranian press agency, there are thousands who only visit their compatriots and fellow believers, who imbibe only from familiar sources, who only want to confirm their certainties and justify their resentments in front of their screens.
So much so that this amazing modern tool, which ought to encourage harmonious mixing and exchange between cultures, becomes instead a rallying and mobilisation point for the world’s tribes. Not by dint of some conspiracy, but because the internet, which accelerates and amplifies effects, took off at a moment in history when identities were being unleashed, the clash of civilisations was being established and universalism was crumbling, the nature of debates was becoming corrupted, violence was taking precedence in words and deeds, and common reference points were becoming lost.
It is not without significance in this context that this major technological advance, which radically changed relations between people, coincided with a strategic disaster of the first order, namely the end of the confrontation between the two great planetary blocs, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, the emergence of a world in which differences of identity have taken over from ideological differences, and the advent of a single superpower which unwillingly exerts de facto hegemony the length and breadth of the planet.
