Last February, historian and educator Tarik Cyril Amar wrote one of the most pessimistic articles I’ve ever read. The gist of it is what he calls The Gaza Method, defined as:
The West’s evolving blueprint for controlling a poly-crisis world by mass-murdering and subjugating the poor, the rebellious, and those deemed “superfluous.”
His argument, that I am not proposing to either defend or criticize, is that Gaza, Ukraine, and the rest of the murderous ‘adventures’ of the west throughout the world over the past half-century are experiments to develop and hone a “method” for dealing with global chaos and anarchy as the collapse of our civilization accelerates over the coming decades.
The obvious question is: Whose method is this? Who is ‘behind’ its development and increasingly brutal application? It can’t be just a few “bad apples”, some insane small elite still stuck in the paranoia of the Cold War. But it also seems unlikely to be a more vast, deliberate conspiracy by the entire neoliberal “Deep State” preparing enthusiastically to genocide most of the world’s population to protect a small group of select, privileged survivors. (As much as the lunatic billionaire advocates of longtermism/”effective altruism”, and the nihilistic fans of The Rapture, might think this to be true.)
Tariq speculates that some of those ‘behind’ this method are insane, or bribed, or being blackmailed, but that for the most part this method is a simple rationalization for what the proponents of this method have already decided needs to be done, and is being done, and all the propaganda in the western media is designed to convince the majority of citizens that this rationalization is correct — that genocides, coups, torture prisons and other extreme acts of violence by collective and state actors are “normal” and hence rational responses to anything labelled “terror”.
If that’s the case, then, Tariq asks why those supporting and acceding to this method are behaving this way. This is his answer:
The West is in decline in a severely crisis-ridden world … Its “elites” … are adopting a Darwinistic … mindset. They will fight for what they hubristically see as their “garden” and against what they … dismiss as the “jungle” – that is, everyone else… Since they are in decline, however, their ability to conduct that fight is restricted: They have, for instance, already ruined their soft power [and] in particular, the West’s ability to cajole others through dependency and the international financial system is about to be lost. All of the above means that the West is left with one option: the hardest of powers: … military force. And that is where the Gaza Genocide precedent fulfills its most important function as method-setting and method-“normalizing.”
I have regularly argued in my articles that while there is an unprecedented concentration of power in our contemporary civilization, that power is not organized or single-minded. There is almost no agreement among those with the most power as to what ‘should’ be done to cope with the poly-crisis of collapse. And in any case, even if there were, there is no group powerful enough to ‘control the world’. Our civilization is simply too complex and has too many moving parts to be controlled by any group. Despite the concentration of power, what happens each moment is the collective result of eight billion people doing what they have been biologically and culturally conditioned to do. No one and no group is “in control”, or ever could be.
And yet there remains a possibility that Tariq has hit upon an important truth in his article: (1) It doesn’t matter whether control is illusory or not, if a large proportion of the rich and powerful believe they are in control (or that they could be, or are destined to be, in control), and (2) Even if these rich and powerful people do not consciously believe that genocide and similar atrocities are justified, necessary, and rationalizable, it may be sufficient that subconsciously they have reached this terrible conclusion.
Such is the arrogance of American (and western) exceptionalism that it is entirely conceivable to me that a disorganized group of rich and powerful westerners actually believes they can and must ‘control’ the rest of the world to navigate civilization’s collapse, in the ‘best interests of all’.
And it is equally conceivable to me that this same group would be willing to rationalize to themselves (and to the rest of the world via mainstream media and other propaganda tools) that anything they do to exercise that ‘control’ is justifiable — or else they wouldn’t be doing it.
I have argued (annoyingly, to some) that our beliefs don’t actually influence our behaviours — our beliefs are an after-the-fact rationalization of our behaviours, and nothing more. So when a wannabe-western-aligned state (Ukraine) launches a brutal civil war and bombing campaign against its eastern provinces after overthrowing (with western support) its duly-elected Russian-aligned government (2014), we have no choice but to rationalize that they must have been justified in doing so, and hence support them and otherwise behave accordingly.
And when a western-aligned state (Israel) launches a massive genocide to starve and exterminate two million civilian residents of the open-air concentration camp it has constructed in its illegally-occupied territories in Palestine, we have no choice but to rationalize that they must have been justified in doing so, and hence support them and otherwise behave accordingly.
Our behaviour is entirely conditioned by the behaviours of others. Our beliefs don’t enter into it, except to rationalize our behaviour afterwards.
This is not to say that our conditioning might not change. As with the situation in Vietnam, Afghanistan and many other western wars, coups and occupations, there can come a point where our behaviour may switch from supporting a western-aligned state to opposing it, or at least no longer supporting it. It takes a long time for our solidly-set conditioning to change, and it is hard to do, but it has happened, and it can happen. At that point, we must suddenly and uncomfortably rationalize why our previous behaviour was unsupportable (ie wrong, or worse — irrational). This is usually an exercise in convenient forgetting, and retroactively revising the history books.
So: Back to where we stand now. We are living in a civilization in its declining years, in an inevitable and accelerating state of collapse. Most of the world is aware that the west has been largely responsible for this collapse (which is already happening all around them in most of the Global South), a west which remains in denial and unwilling or unable to do anything about it, except make it worse. And a rich and powerful but hopelessly disorganized group in the west, rapidly losing power and influence as collapse worsens, but feeling like they are, or should be, or are destined to be, in control of the situation.
What is this rapidly-diminishing western group feeling? Shame, most of all. Helplessness. Anger (at themselves and especially at anyone they can convince themselves is ‘really’ to blame). Fear, of course — Collapse is going to be mighty ugly when it reaches them, and they kind of know their wealth and power and compounds aren’t going to protect them from it for long. And, inevitably, denial. This can’t be happening. Not on our watch. We need to stay in control. We need to act. We need to harden ourselves, to inure ourselves, because some really tough ‘decisions’ are going to be needed. After all, there’s not nearly enough to go around. Someone — lots of people — are going to have to do without.
Again, I don’t think this is happening uniformly among all of the rich and powerful westerners, as the nature of the poly-crisis predicament increasingly becomes impossible to ignore. And I don’t think, for the most part, it’s happening consciously. But I think anyone reasonably informed about the current reality (and the rich and powerful are, generally, reasonably informed) would have to be brain-dead not to intuitively sense, and emotionally sense, and hence realize, at least subconsciously, that the decades to come are going to be grim, for everyone.
Tariq’s argument is that the actions of ‘the west’ (the rich and powerful ‘tail’ wagging the bewildered, propagandized citizenry ‘dog’) portend future actions of oppression, subjugation, and ‘rationalized’, ‘justified’ mass murder becoming ‘normal’ as the situation worsens. I’ll leave it up to the reader to assess that argument, since I have been notoriously poor at predicting the future (and when I’ve been right, my timing has generally been way off).
I’m just trying to make sense of the current situation, which makes no sense to me at all. We are at a juncture where most of us, I think, at least subconsciously, ‘know’ that we must put aside our differences and work together, furiously, if we are to have any hope of even lessening the impact of collapse on humans and the more-than-human world. And I think we also ‘know’, at least subconsciously, that we’re not going to do that.
What we — all eight billion of us — will do instead, is anyone’s guess. Our behaviours may all be conditioned, but they are completely unpredictable. Tariq’s prediction may turn out to be correct (though possibly for all the wrong reasons). We’re just the witnesses, here at this turning point in our planet’s remarkable and mysterious evolution, chronicling it as we see it.
It’s all that we can do.
Thanks to Billmon at Moon of Alabama for linking to Tariq’s article. Image is from Midjourney AI, my own prompt.
This analysis indulges in a commonplace fallacy: the Intentional Fallacy. Peering into the minds of notional “people in control” is comforting, perhaps, but it’s mostly projection. I agree that industrial civilization is in effect a headless beast lurching hither and yon in response to influences perceived dimly at best (i.e., intuited), meaning no one is or can be in control. No need to seek a Bond villain/organization (Blofeld/Spectre) to frame one’s thinking. That, too, is projection.
However, no doubt there are individuals and organizations acting maniacally in response to increasingly dire indications, gathering power to themselves. It won’t count for much when the crunch occurs.
Blofeld/Spectre has been intentionally projected onto Putin/Russia and millions eat it up. Why not? They’ve been more informed by Hollywood (US Government propaganda) than from reading history.
If the elite are so smart, why did the world get where it is on their watch? If they can’t prevent collapse what would be the reasons they could survive it and come out the other end still on top?
Seems to me they have been barely challenged within western nations. When we hit a critical mass of enough people with nothing left to lose and no prospects, things could get ugly. Did you see all the trouble a small handful of saboteurs caused over a few days in France?
“Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the face.”-Mike Tyson
So the West has been on top for a while but that doesn’t necessarily confer virtue on its competitors. America and Britain only globalised the playbook for imperialism -back some murderous and thuggish regime who then owes you like Pinochet or Mobutu and rake in the profits while you can but the ugliness of the Japanese imperial adventure followed by Russia and now China doesn’t deserve any brownie points.Was the ‘duly elected government of the Ukraine’ the Yanakovitch regime? When the nazis marched in they were greeted as liberators but it was deja vu all over again, topped by Stalin’s revenge of the holomayor and Russian puppet regimes thereafter. Pinochet was a relative moderate, only murdering a few thousand college kids.
The highest density of billionaires in the world is Moscow where a fortunate few coalesced all worthwhile collective ownership into their own hands. Putin will maintain their loyalty with the wealth of his ‘Greater Russia’ like Donetz gas reserves. And the Palestinians (about a hundredfold more than can be supported locally) stand to receive SFA from the other believers: Jews, their own Muslim Brethren or those righteous young zealots on our streets and campuses. Watching the Great Unravelling unfold it is so good to be old.
Dave, you suggest that “We are at a juncture where most of us, I think, at least subconsciously, ‘know’ that we must put aside our differences and work together, furiously …” (I assume “we” refers to the global population.) Yes, that might be a widespread subconscious knowledge, but it’s not translating into, for example, political action. I think that for the great majority there are more powerful factors (conditioning) affecting behavior and consciousness: an immediate need for security (maintaining a home, making a living, maintaining status or success in a competitive world, etc.); an immediate need for belonging (identifying with a nationality, religion, etc. rather than with humanity or life as a whole, and avoiding being “weird” due to a belief that the global system is immoral and unsustainable); and an immediate need for certainty (buying into some version of a “business as usual” worldview rather than accepting the possibility of “chaos”). In the human psyche in most cases, long term concerns don’t have much chance unless those immediate concerns have been satisfied–which probably won’t happen for most in our unstable world. We “weird” ones who read your blog are a notable exception, but we will remain marginal. At least, that seems to me how things are working out.
Yes, I’d agree, Paul. I think there are lots of things we subconsciously ‘know’ that we don’t (or can’t) act on due to our being conditioned otherwise. Hence some of the incessant cognitive dissonance of being a member of our uniquely dysfunctional species.
David
This post and many others are proposing solutions based on a view of the problem at the margins of today’s existence.
If the population was 1/100 in both Israel and Gaza and was expected to not increase the wall would come down in a week.
On the other hand if the population continues to increase in both places the wall will only get higher along with the conflict.
The whole earth forms a wall. The earth’s population is already 100 times to big for the earth to support without fossil fuels or substitutes.
The physical solution to the problems caused by the gross human load on earth is a contraction to less than 1% of the present community. Saying that we can not do that just accepts the problems we have. Changing the things we can, for example the suggests above just accepts the problems we have. And going forward on our present course just guarantees a super crash this century. My estimate for the next 80 years is 13.4 billion people starving to death or dying in conflict. see calculations https://youtu.be/b5z5R6xqEG0
That is a big number that may motivate behavior that is not on the table. A non-recoverable dark age may motivate a behavior that is not on the table. Who is going to take this behavior? It does not look like a top down or a bottom group of actors can take it. That leaves the possibility of a lone wolf actor that does not need either group’s help or approval. I’m not advocating the lone wolf’s actions. I just imagining that the lone wolf may precipitate the high probability outcome for the human path forward.
Jack Alpert
http://www.skil.org
More( https://www.evernote.com/l/AAmZY0Hicy9KbLmuRpZRVAjtdR3UQC_bhEE
Daoudjan, I think all of us in the so-called West are complicit to some degree or another. I remember Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem, “Call Me By My True Names.”
Especially:
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am also the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp
I don’t know if it was a fantasy or perhaps I did once pose this question (or made the point) at my old dharma center- We might all want to be peaceful, be “fighting” for peace, but if we are paying income taxes here in Pindostan, half of that revenue goes to war…
I have pointed out to liberal-minded friends in Russia, folks who are social/political activists and use the de rigeur descriptor for the Kremlin these days – “cannibal”- that, by extension, we are all cannibals…if we want to really use that metaphor.
I confess I don’t really understand the “cannibal” metaphor. It seems to be used, like “vampire”, more for the raw images the word conjures up than for any actual metaphorical meaning. At least they don’t call them “vegans” [https://hatevegans.com/ — yes it’s a spoof]!
As for accusations of us all being “complicit” or “cannibals”, that can be a really effective means of shutting down dissent in the hands of propagandists. If we’re all “complicit” in war, or climate collapse, then we have no right criticizing it until and unless somehow we’re able to become “un-complicit”, which we cannot.
I know I’ve been charged with retreating to arguments about (lack of) free will and non-duality when people have called me passive or defeatist, but I have yet to hear a persuasive argument about how any “one” without free will, and without a ‘real’ separate self, can possibly be “complicit”, or anything else. It’s like accusing someone’s big toe of being complicit in their heart attack because they didn’t intervene when the body stopped exercising properly. There is no free will, and there are no “selves” in control and making decisions about what bodies do. It is all conditioned behaviours and responses. There is no choice.
The poem you cite is moving, and I understand the sentiment behind it, but it is also completely unfair.
Daoudjan,
I confess I don’t know enough to really speak to the free will question. I will acknowledge that use of the word “complicit” probably isn’t very helpful…but I think it is helpful to be reminded that we are all participants (or at least those of us in Pindostan) in a pretty life-depleting system.
I’d be curious to hear what you mean by the poem being completely unfair!