Para Bellum
With the disaster we have before our eyes, writing about War and Peace is today a slippery exercise. It is pointless to seek specific answers to the ongoing crises. On Israel and Palestine, for example, History, which is not just from the Balfour Declaration to today but also includes the millennia-old history of the children of Shem, is too long and complicated for a non-expert to even attempt a reading without falling into some form of bias. But, just like the war between Russia and Ukraine, the terrorist aggression of October 7th and Israel’s response cannot fail to question the conscience of all those people who deeply believe in Peace.
At this historical moment, the world is dangerously engaging in a series of regional conflicts with unpredictable outcomes, almost all of which, for one reason or another, are potential triggers for conflicts on a global scale. Naturally, in this sense, I think, in addition to Israel and Palestine, and the Russian aggression in Ukraine, also of the exodus of a million Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh. The Chinese pressure on Taiwan. The tensions in the Balkans. The dozens of crises, coups, revolts, instabilities of the African continent, which I do not even try to summarize.
As the leading global military and economic global superpower, the United States inevitably plays a role in each of these conflicts, whether they are active or simmering. Biden’s strategy seems to be aimed at keeping these hotspots under control, allowing them to evolve only up to a certain point, attempting as much as possible to contain them, and letting time bring them to a stalemate, presumably to then negotiate a return to, more or less, the status quo. This strategy is especially apparent in the Russo-Ukrainian front, where Ukraine’s much-discussed advance has stalled. America seems to be acting like physicians who let fevers rise, monitoring their progression, to allow the illness to run its course without ever reaching genuinely dangerous levels for the patient.
I will revisit this strategy shortly. But first, I’d like to reflect on what we’re witnessing. These observations might be evident, yet they’re not often articulated sequentially. First and foremost: in every instance, conflicts arise where problems have been unresolved for far too long. Each major issue is the offspring of decades, if not centuries, of failures in dispute resolution. Secondly, ethnic or religious factors, or a combination of the two, play a pivotal role in each. Lastly, every conflict has erupted or is erupting at boundary zones. They are the cultural-political boundaries between the West and East, borders established in the aftermath of World War II, and boundaries among different ethnic or religious groups. It’s as if every clash happens near a shifting tectonic fault line.
From these reflections, a few additional insights emerge. Firstly: the inadequacy of supranational organizations in addressing crises. For a long time now, it has been clear that the United Nations cannot prevent or solve severe international crises. The recent vote on the Jordanian proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza, supported by 120 nations, with 45 abstentions and only 14 against, is yet another glaring example of the UN’s ineffectiveness in resolving international disputes. Not only did the ceasefire not materialize, despite the overwhelming majority in favour, but Israel went as far as accusing the UN Secretary-General of anti-Semitism, thereby overtly challenging the impartial role he is assumed to hold.
The second inference is that the United States is faltering in its imperial mission. The notion that, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world would experience peace under the American umbrella has definitively waned. It has been the case for years, but today the erosion is increasingly resembling an earthquake. America struggles to find suitable resolutions to crises and seems unable to play its role as the predominant global superpower effectively. I wish to underscore that I don’t necessarily blame the U.S.: the world is too multifaceted to be strictly defined in terms of “good” and “evil”—a binary Americans, due to their history and culture, are naturally inclined to adopt. Importantly, the American empire is the first in history to be beholden to the whims of its electorate.
Since Vietnam, it has become clear that America loses wars on the home front.
My sole observation here is that Americans place undue trust in their military prowess and economic stability, while often seeming ineffective in terms of political diplomacy. The U.S. teeters on the brink of default annually, staving it off at the eleventh hour thanks to endless negotiations between increasingly distant and muddled political factions. The idea that global peace might hinge on the sentiments of, say, the last senator from Wisconsin whose vote determines the government’s solvency is not reassuring. One might argue this is the essence of democracy. That’s fine. But the crux of the matter is this: democracy isn’t a governance model conducive to running a de facto empire, where pivotal decisions can’t always account for looming domestic elections. The tension between democratic ideals and global dominance appears increasingly irreconcilable.
As for military might, the one the U.S. undeniably possesses—its nuclear arsenal—is apt for annihilating the planet, not for winning a war in which it’s presumed someone remains to maintain the peace.
The third deduction is that the post-Soviet Union world, devoid of its socialist ideal, has become ungovernable. Countries that, between the end of World War II and 1989, sought socialism as a path to modernize and break free from ancient ethnic, religious, and tribal feuds, found themselves without a credible ideological alternative for inspiration. They reverted to their previous states. The secular nature of nations, especially African and Arab ones, has been re-questioned and, in most cases, defeated.
The fourth deduction is that Europe has relinquished nearly every lever of influence it once held. Despite being the world’s richest and most liberated continent, even surpassing America in certain respects, Europe has, presumably for its perceived benefit, forsaken any real claim to global political sway. The European Union’s foremost concern in foreign affairs remains safeguarding the already precarious socio-economic status of its citizens, believing its paramount issue to be curbing immigration as much as possible. It lacks a unified military force, a cohesive foreign policy, and a singular seat at the United Nations Security Council. It also suffered a significant blow with the departure of the United Kingdom.
While Europe historically bears responsibility for numerous crisis-inducing factors—from centuries of persecuting Jews to the Holocaust, from colonialism (the notion that Italy once held territorial concessions in China seems laughable today, if not downright untenable) to the modern-day exploitation of natural resources in African and Arab nations in exchange for supporting questionable regimes—the Union is conspicuously silent. On this note, I observe that Luigi Di Maio, the EU’s Special Representative for the Gulf countries, that play a crucial role in the Israel-Palestine conflict, has not given even a single interview over the past month. With Di Maio’s shift into technocracy, this silence isn’t his own fault, of course: it’s the EU that chooses not to speak out. I surmise this is because it lacks any coherent stance to articulate.
The fifth inference is that the global spheres of influence devised at Yalta have come to an end. England has self-demoted to a minor regional power, its significance purely hinging on its nuclear arsenal which, as noted earlier, is more a tool of wholesale destruction than deterrence, making it fundamentally redundant. Russia, stripped of its unifying communist ideal, is no longer the Soviet behemoth but merely a vast, impoverished, and backward nation—thus rendering it potentially more dangerous. And importantly, today’s China is a far cry from its 1945 iteration. Overlooked at Yalta, it now stands on the brink of surpassing the United States in every conceivable way. Consequently, the real underlying conflict, as we all acknowledge, is between these last two powers.
In light of the points raised, when we examine Biden’s aforementioned containment strategy, it appears that both America and China, each for their own reasons, are biding their time in anticipation of the inevitable confrontation. America does so out of the realization that a conflict with China might prove calamitous. China, on the other hand, may not be fully prepared for a head-on collision with America just yet.
The final observation points to the utter inadequacy of global leadership in relation to the challenges it faces. Looking at those responsible for global political decisions, Joe Biden emerges as the only individual providing a semblance of stability. However, beyond occasional slip-ups, Biden is 81, and it’s quite likely he won’t seek a second term. The containment policy might end sooner than many anticipate. Aside from Emmanuel Macron’s keenness to be in the limelight, European leaders are largely absent from the scene. Those from nations directly embroiled in conflicts, like Putin and Netanyahu, have lost significant credibility internationally. Both are domestically challenged and are reluctantly supported by their major backers—China on one side and the U.S. on the other.
Particularly, U.S. patience towards Netanyahu, never a favourite of the current administration, seems to be wearing thin. It’s clear that Israel’s current actions are more about restoring Israeli citizens’ faith in their nation’s military prowess, which was significantly shaken by the spectacular failure of their intelligence—once regarded as among the best globally—on October 7th. However, the intensity with which Israel is targeting Gaza seems, even in the eyes of Israel’s allies (including Biden, who has repeatedly called for restraint), increasingly disproportionate to Netanyahu’s need to vindicate himself and the Israeli defence system in the eyes of a stunned domestic public.
Given these factors, who is truly working for peace? Global pacifism is fractured into too many organizations, their foundational ideals often overlapping with other concerns—promotion of international law, democracy, civil rights, environmentalism, religious beliefs, and so forth. The collective conversation about peace frequently devolves into discussions on other matters. This is understandable, given that while peace is a civilizational goal that inherently presupposes dialogue, war is a reversion to a primal dimension of human relations, which does not. By its very definition, war halts dialogue. Yet, for pacifism to be effective, it should find a common ground and focus on a specific aim, which, given the current state of affairs, should be to prevent the outbreak of World War III.
Some argue that World War III has already begun. While the ongoing crises may lay the groundwork for it, a global war, characterized by the full-scale mobilization of the armies of major powers, has fortunately not yet erupted. The unity of pacifist forces worldwide would be vital. A broad-based mobilization of Western pacifism would be insufficient and might even be perceived as a sign of weakness. This calls for significant efforts to help pacifists in nations like Russia and China to organize and strengthen their stand.
But is this feasible? This task is inherently complex, with the understanding that pacifists in such countries risk imprisonment, if not their lives. Any supportive action would necessitate active engagement from those very supranational organizations, such as the United Nations and the European Union, which are currently conspicuous for their weakness and inefficacy.
This leads us into a vicious cycle. The frailty of supranational organizations established to ensure global peace has led to the current pre-war global situation. The global pacifist movement cannot hope to make any meaningful impact without active backing from these organizations. Thus, it seems that pacifism, unfortunately, may not have the means to influence the ongoing issues.
Are we then on the brink of witnessing a Third World War? Evidently, the positioning of major powers and their regional affiliates on opposing fronts appears to be solidifying. Once again, the onus falls on America. For over a century, it has held the mantle of leading the West and now must navigate the pressing challenge of diffusing increasing global tensions, especially when its preeminent status stands threatened. Here, President Biden’s containment strategy resurfaces. While allowing individual conflicts to run their course may seem wise in the short term, it poses significant risks in the long run. Any of the ongoing crises could spiral out of control at any moment, due to miscalculations, personal ambitions, political blunders, or a sheer loss of reason and restraint. Time, it seems, is more on China’s side than America’s.
To circumvent a global war, the United States must acknowledge the shifting power dynamics and convene a modern-day Yalta Conference to redraw the 21st-century world map, granting China the “seat at the table” it has earned over the past three decades. It might then fall to China to rein in Russian ambitions, and Russia, in turn, to check Iran, etc. Of course, American willingness alone is not enough. It’s necessary that its counterparts sit at the table with the same integrity. Is this possible? It’s certainly worth taking the risk.
This suggests that America is facing its second real test as the world’s dominant power — the first being the Cold War. To genuinely act as a global empire, the U.S. must first resolve the ideological contradiction — one not faced by China or Russia — between Democracy and Empire. Efforts have been made, with the U.S. championing “democracy exportation”, akin to Britain’s historical “White Man’s Burden”. Actions driven by imperial politics have been masqueraded as attempts to spread rights and freedoms. Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t worked. For the majority of the world, this neo-conservative American concept appears as mere propaganda, defending U.S. and Western geopolitical and economic interests.
This does not mean that a part of America did not sincerely believe in its mission to spread Democracy around the world. We have seen other examples in history where great powers have tried to export their ideological achievements at the point of a bayonet. Consider Napoleon and the ideals of freedom from the French Revolution. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple: evolutions in socio-political thought either develop on their own, or they do not.
At the heart of the matter lies the restoration of a peaceful balance among major powers, ensuring the well-being of the majority of humankind — a recurring theme throughout history. Democracy and freedom aren’t necessarily at the core. The challenge is straightforward: genuinely recognize the relative weight of each player and reach a consensus based on an accurate assessment of each one’s strength. A sheer redefinition of spheres of influence.
Should this redefinition not arise from the foresight of politicians, it might tragically result from the aftermath of a world war. Just as World War I failed to resolve all underlying issues, a third might not suffice either.
The pivotal question remains: Can America exhibit such foresight? Is it willing to abandon its two-decade-long rhetoric of exporting democracy? Can it move beyond the simplistic dichotomy of Good versus Evil? For the sake of a pragmatic vision aimed at global peace and preserving its status, can the U.S. openly wield its hegemonic role and squarely address the inherent contradiction between Democracy and Empire to its electorate? Will America accept to share its power?
Woke
Personally, I never thought I wanted to change the world.
The idea has never even occurred to me. When I was very young, I hoped to be able to live in a world that was not completely unequal, and I thought that Politics was the discipline in which to engage in order to reduce the too many injustices and contradictions of social life.
Having said that, I have never been actively involved in politics, except very briefly a few years ago, and only at the local level. By nature I’m not one who participates in street demonstrations, even when I share the motivations. Around the age of twenty, I approached shyly, for a while, at university. But it lasted very little. Life suddenly seemed to me to have become an uninterrupted succession of slogans and dogmas.
And yet, the urge to “change the world” is inherent in all human beings, at least as much as the urge to keep it as it is.
When I was young, also because of the years of relative social peace and economic growth in Italy, the 1980s and 1990s, I believed that it was possible to achieve the necessary improvements through debate. One of the characteristics that I believe I possess is that of being able, at least in part, to see the points of view other than my own and, in general, to grant them equal dignity. This is a quality that almost everyone claims but, of course, it is much rarer than one would like to admit.
In fact, it is almost never simply a matter of rationally understanding the other person’s point of view, but of empathizing with it. Of understanding it emotionally. This is much more difficult. The ability to put oneself “in the other person’s shoes” does, in fact, cause quite a few difficulties: truly seeing the reasons of others means seriously questioning one’s own.
I used to think, however, that if we succeeded in this difficult exercise, even the socio-economic system in which we all live could be reformed at will. For some time now, I no longer believe this.
Or rather, I no longer believe that Politics, as defined as the competition of ideas and political agendas, is a viable path, if one really wants to achieve change. The mechanisms that bind official politics to economic interests are in fact too complex and rooted for them to be significantly modified. I am not speaking here of corruption, but of the inextricable interweaving between “legitimate” economic interests, at times even “strategic” ones, and political action.
The exponential increase of political communication and the need, on the part of any political group in any Western democracy, to continually guarantee consensus in the short term, has further inhibited the ability of Politics to become the bearer of any truly revolutionary idea.
Now. Since Politics has proved insufficient to “change the world”, in recent years the quest for change has resorted to Culture. This is quite natural. Movements such as Me Too, LGBTQ activism, Black Lives Matter, Greta Thunberg’s environmentalism, the Cancel Culture, the “Woke” attitude in general influence and divide public opinion much more than the political debate in the strict sense.
All this debate is often welcomed with annoyance. The fact that many of these themes are generally upheld by the international political Left which, in the meantime, seems deaf, or in any case largely ineffective in its mission to deal with the growing economic and social difficulties of ever larger segments of the Western population, contributes greatly to the annoyance.
Woke issues are often perceived as the fig leaf of the “radical chic” who pontificate on the way we should live while forgetting to take care of making taxation more progressive, distributing wealth more equitably, or letting big multinationals exploit our work and our credulity without lifting a finger and, indeed, supporting them in their enterprise.
Another reason for annoyance is that, since most of these movements were born in the United States of America, a nation characterized by ontological extremism, and have spread to the English speaking world in general, some of the innovations they are trying to introduce appear absurd to common sense.
I remember a dinner with an American producer, a couple of years ago, who told me that in Hollywood it was now considered unthinkable for a man to hold any meeting behind closed doors with a woman. The doors of the offices had to remain open at all times. In the last few days, the professors of the University of Oxford have decided to “decolonize” the Music syllabus, reducing the centrality of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven and reasoning on ways to modify musical notation, to this day the most universal language that exists, originating from the work of the Italian monk Guido d’Arezzo.
A few months ago, Channel 5 announced its intention to produce a series in which Anne Boleyn will be played by Jodie Turner-Smith, a black actress. There are now almost daily controversies about the Cancel Culture that is exercised on monuments, films or books deemed to carry values incompatible with the need to affirm the equality of all human beings.
Most of the people I know object to what they consider extreme positions. When I heard that Anne Boleyn was going to be played by a black woman, or when I heard that the importance attached to Bach’s music was being held responsible for the White Man’s cultural dominance… when I heard that they were going to tear down the statues of Christopher Columbus, or that you can’t talk about professional fees or business strategies with a woman behind a closed door… and many other times, I turned my nose up at them too.
Maybe I was wrong, though.
Why, indeed, beyond political grudges and biases, are these cultural trends sometimes so desperately exasperating? Is it not because they deeply question our own way of being, our dominant culture? Because they challenge us and what we identify with?
And how should the world change, if not through a change in the way we see it?
Remember: understanding the motives of others is not just about understanding them rationally, but more importantly about understanding them emotionally. Questioning our own. This is exactly what the woke culture forces us to do.
And, so, let’s examine some of these “extremes”.
A (black) friend pointed out to me, for example, that the same people who are outraged by the choice of a black Anne Boleyn are the ones who accept without batting an eyelid the portrayal of Jesus Christ as a beautiful white, blond, blue-eyed boy. Of course no sane person, stopping to reflect for more than twenty seconds on the fact that Jesus was born ten kilometers from Jerusalem, would find it credible that he could ever be blond and blue-eyed. And yet, this is exactly the point: no one dwells on this thought for more than twenty seconds. It is taken for granted. What matters, in fact, is not reality, but the representation we give of it, and who has the power to impose this representation on the world.
The world accepts without a question that Jesus was white and blond because the West has represented him that way for two millennia. But such representation undoubtedly serves to establish a hegemonic model. Christianity has identified itself for centuries with the West, and therefore Christ is Caucasian. And who can deny that this representation has been instrumental in the construction of a presumed moral superiority of Westerners over other peoples of the world?
The portraits of Anne Boleyn show her as a white woman, but if we represent her as black for long enough, in due time she will become black. Come to think of it, in a purely theoretical way, since we only have oil portraits of Anne Boleyn, we do not have the certainty that she even was white. Not even judging from her famous daughter. We simply take it for granted that European celebrities of the past were white. In the collective imagination, we have erased any assumption to the contrary. How many people know, for example, that Alexandre Dumas’ father, the author of The Three Musketeers, was of mixed ethnic origin? That the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus was “black” (as evidenced by the gold coins that depict him with his wife and children, and on which, unlike theirs, his face is bronze)? That Saint Augustine was of Berber ethnicity?
Iconoclasm is bad, certainly. And yet. If a little black boy is born and grows up in an apartment facing the statue of a slave owner from the past, what message is conveyed to the little boy, who introjects it unconsciously? That, since the statue is not removed, the society in which he was born, lives and dies, still considers it right to celebrate a slave owner. This may be a simplistic reading: but, once again, let’s empathize with the little boy. The first time he asks his parents whose statue it is, they will tell him the story of a slaver. Before the boy is old enough and culturally mature enough to ask himself questions about whether or not the vestiges of the past should be torn down, he will have assumed that the statue does not have the same meaning for him and his ancestors as it does for whites. And that society as a whole is still happy to reaffirm the ancient power relationship.
On the professional opportunities that the world offers women, another friend (male, white) pointed out to me that the fact that political correctness nowadays wants women to hold a certain predefined number of positions of responsibility, tending to equal that of men, regardless of their actual skills, is an own goal for women and a disadvantage for society in general. The lack of objective skills, in fact, will only cause their failure and the consequent inefficiency of the system. It would be a fair objection, if the same measure were applied for incompetent men, of whom, thank God, we have no lack. An incompetent man is not an incompetent “man”, but simply “incompetent”. An incompetent woman, remains an incompetent “woman.” Her incompetence is unconsciously placed in relation to her gender.
Bach’s music is, as far as I am concerned, one of the highest expressions of human genius in general. And yet, Bach is certainly not the only prominent figure in world music. The only thing that leads people like me to raise an eyebrow at hearing the Oxford University story is its premise: one does not want to try to restore some equity in knowledge of the world scene by broadening students’ horizons with new information. But they want to “punish” poor Bach, who has done nothing but good to the world music scene. Yet, it is indisputable that the West has imposed the greatness of its own art on the rest of the world, and that the world, in general terms, has ended up by making the idea of the artistic masterpiece coincide with Beethoven’s sonatas or Leonardo’s paintings. The fact that there are objective technical reasons for defining certain artistic peaks as universally exceptional does not affect the underlying truth that the criteria by which we define those reasons have been established by us.
By us male, white, Westerners.
And thus, it is we who are being challenged today. Clearly, this scares us. We feel under attack, and we become defensive. We try to oppose rational arguments. We quarrel. We fight. Yet, if we made an effort to use empathy as a key to understanding the changing reality around us, we would be less afraid.
I found this concept admirably expressed by someone interviewed a few weeks ago by Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain, a program from which the journalist was later kicked out for reacting too crudely to the Meghan Markle interview. The topic of the interview (which I post here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1pW6r9kjiw), however, had nothing to do with the British royal family, but with the choice made by the interviewee and her two partners to raise their two children in a “gender neutral” way. Simply put, this is about not tying anatomical sexual gender to the identity and personality of the children.
The interviewee has given her children names that do not sexually connote them, and she addresses them by avoiding using the pronouns “she” or “he” and using “you”, as was done in certain eras past. According to her, children should live in a non-sexualized world until they reach the age where they spontaneously begin to question themselves about these issues: at that point, they have to be left free to choose which gender identity they belong to, whether one or both, regardless of their anatomical condition. The fact that Morgan is very aggressive with the person interviewed, and that the latter expresses herself on the contrary in a perfectly civil, calm and understandable way, made me instinctively lean towards her.
Morgan was appealing to common sense. That is, to our customs. To our certainties. A creature born with a penis is a male. A creature that is born with a vagina is a female. Morgan is so modern and generous that he grants them the right to choose to take on a different gender identity if they wish. But this must necessarily be done consciously and painfully, in a dialectical confrontation with Society, with “tears and blood” in short, since they must implicitly assume the responsibility of abandoning an identity predefined by Nature.
This is obviously a cultural forcing: Nature has given you a penis. You are therefore a Man. If you decide to become a Woman, you will have to suffer psychologically the decision.
But Nature, among its many characteristics, does not include that of having an ethical or moral position.
Nature does not attach any gender identity to the penis or the vagina. It is we who tie people’s identities and psychology to these anatomical details. And, come to think of it, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, penis and vagina are the last anatomical features to which our Society officially ties any psychological significance. Racist as one may be, Society no longer officially ties skin pigment to a person’s ought-to-be. No longer is it thought that a sinister looking person with a hump is a serial killer. No longer is it officially stated that a person of particularly short stature is probably a megalomaniac, or that beautiful blonde women are stupid.
And yet, if one has a penis, they have a basic masculine identity. If they have a vagina, they have a feminine identity.
Undoubtedly, at a first instinctive assessment, I had difficulty “putting myself in the shoes” of the person being interviewed. And yet, it is only in this way that the world can truly change. The world changes if its most deeply rooted and profound cultural assumptions change. And there is no assumption more deep-rooted and profound than the one that lies within ourselves.
We must not be afraid of these changes, even if we instinctively feel that they are changes that challenge us personally. We must not resist, in an attempt to contain the world that seems to slip through our fingers. We must let go, breathe deeply, and cling to the certainty that our heart is an elastic muscle: it is capable of expanding enough to contain the empathy necessary to put ourselves in everyone’s shoes.
Of course, it is by no means certain that change is always better than what was there before. But that, is a whole other discussion.
Private Vice, Public Virtue.
It was never clear whether former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti did actually say: “You sin in thinking bad about people, but, often, you guess right”. Whether he did or not, a lot of people think this way. Those who look with suspicion to the immense earnings that some pharmaceutical companies realize thanks to the anti Covid vaccine certainly do.
Some go beyond mere suspicion. More or less explicitly, more or less imaginatively, they attribute the very origin of the pandemics to the Industry. A way to induce the need of a vaccine with which to make money. Others don’t go as far as that, but still suspect that the panic triggered by the pandemics, is inspired by “Big Pharma”.
That “Big Pharma” makes billions from the anti-Covid vaccine is obvious. That the pharmaceutical industry maneuvered to create the problem out of thin air is unprovable. That it has worked to ensure that there was no real alternative to the search for a vaccine (such as improved treatment and health systems for example) is possible. The purpose of pharmaceutical companies is not to save people’s lives. It is to create profit for its shareholders. Just like that of any another private company.
As people perceive the obvious reality, namely that private companies went after the vaccine to produce profit, some deduce that the vaccine is automatically a hoax, or that it is harmful. Of course, that is an obvious conceptual error.
Ford did not built cars to ensure mobility for Americans, but to make money. This obviously does not imply that Ford’s cars were a hoax.
But, however wrong they may be, these people still see that while society as a whole is sinking, someone is becoming a multi-billionaire “thanks” to the existence of Covid. While their conclusions may be wrong, they inadvertently raise a very serious issue.
Is it right for scientific research to be ultimately aimed at the production of Profit in the case of fields affecting the very survival of a community?
As shown by the article in Scientific American linked at the bottom of this post, the question is relevant to the research that led to the Covid vaccine. The United States of America have funded research without which it would not have been possible to arrive to the vaccine for decades. Then the State allowed private companies to reap the economic benefits, by buying it from them.
That is like saying that the American taxpayer has paid for the vaccine twice. Paid twice for something that can prove crucial for his own survival. And also for the survival of our very System. Needless to say, the public researchers responsible for the groundwork did not become millionaires at all. Indeed, at least one of them, as reported in the article, earned less than the laboratory technicians with whom she worked.
For many years now, we have become accustomed to viewing the Market as an expression of Nature. Just like rain, wind or rivers. Obviously, as it is a human creation, the Market is only a convention. Provided we can return to seeing it as such, we can decide to change its rules at any time.
It doesn’t make sense to question the profit that pharmaceutical companies make thanks to the current market rules. Nor does it serve much purpose, if not to generate chaos, to imagine conspiracies of aliens and drinkers of infants’ blood behind the pandemics.
But today we can and must question the principle according to which while we all fund research, we then also have to buy its product. We can pause to consider whether it is more convenient for the well being of society as a whole that the results of basic scientific research be turned into private profits, or whether it is more appropriate that they be brought back into our lives in public form. Without for the State having to purchase it for us.
Almost everything that makes our lives possible today was born thanks to scientific research funded and carried out by Government agencies. The Digital world is a clear example. That research was funded by taxes paid in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, at the end of which time it went on to form the basis for Silicon Valley. Not one company, or a group of companies owned by the State.
On the other hand, basic research can only be State funded. And this is not because private entrepreneurs are not able to do it, because they plot against us or because they are profiteers. It is because basic research does not immediately produce the object of their enterprise. Which is not a computer, or a vaccine, but Profit. It is also because we have stopped wondering whether it is a good idea to sell off to private individuals what then ends up enriching only them.
The consequence of the decline of the idea thaht Public Good is more important than Private Good is a growing distrust in the System. By all those who do not participate in the wealth produced by the Private Good. Even though they contribute, with difficulty and obligation, to the Public Good. The consequence of such distrust, is the proliferation of all sorts of dangerous drifts. From the various conspiracy theories to the refusal of many to trust scientific discoveries.
We may not agree with those who feel this distrust, especially with their conclusions. But it is short-sighted not to consider their deep motivations. Everything stems from the awareness that Profit, and not the general well-being, is everything’s bottom line. The conclusion that it would be good to restore the Common Good to a position of precedence over the Creation of Profit seems obvious and very simple. But it isn’t. Five decades of rhetoric about the Free Market and the need to reduce the presence of the State in our lives have left a mark. We have forgotten that the Market can be regulated, and subject to laws.
Its inevitability is what we must return to question.
Cassandra Writing
My mother was one of the smartest people I have ever met.
Although no one ever believed her, she was able to predict the Future. I often argued with her. Her predictions were invariably catastrophic and, when I was twenty years old, her pessimism bothered me a lot.
I remember her well. She would sit in her favorite armchair, with her gray hair, and her whiskey and cigarettes. She would stare at me with the sad expression of a Prophet. Someone who unsuccesfully tries to convince their audience that they are telling the Truth. I don’t know if you have ever argued with a Prophet. I hope not, because it is an extremely frustrating experience. You know they are fundamentally right. But you also know that they are not completely right. You sense they are making some fundamental mistake, although you are not able to point it out to them.
Our conversations about Politics and Society invariably ended with me storming out of the room. I was angry and full of indignation. Mother would silently resume her drinking.
In fact, my mother was not a Prophet, and I was not angry with her.
My mother was a very sweet person, of great intelligence and culture. She merely applied her considerable acumen to evaluating the facts of the Present in the light of those of the Past. That allowed her to identify their consequences in the Future. As for me,I was only angry with myself. I felt I didn’t have the power to save her.
Today I live in the Future that my mother predicted. With each passing day I recognize how many of her conclusions have turned out to be accurate. Why, then, didn’t people listen to her?
I have come to see now that it was how she said things, not what she said. My mother was shy, and she suffered from depression. Many people, including her History and Philosophy students in High School, loved and admired her. But they generally did so from afar. With the exception of a very few close friends or family members, people tended to consider her somehow unattainable. They perceived her inner despair, and unconsciously kept their distance.
My mother was like Cassandra, the character in Trojan mythology. Cassandra would predict the Future to a community that would not believe her. My mother would season her exact predictions with an aura of pessimism and tragicism preventing others from grasping Reason beyond Emotion. People erected a defensive barrier to protect themselves from her.
My mother also made another mistake. She did not consider the importance of Time in relation to the consequences of things.
One can certainly predict some consequences of events. But it is very difficult to imagine the time they need to happen. Especially when the facts concern the development of Society. Time is a critical factor and it cannot be ignored. But is almost impossible to calculate.
For most of us, getting the timing of predictions wrong is equivalent to getting them completely wrong. My mother was right about Society today, almost twenty years after her passing. But she thought consequences would display much sooner.
This Blog is dedicated to my mother. I inherited the curiosity for the processes of change in society from her. But not her tragic nature. We will discuss Politics, and Cinema, my two great passions.
Bearing in mind one thing that my mother, unfortunately, never saw. As much as the world can be a terrible place, it is much less so than it seems. And it never really is. Because in addition to the negative consequences of events, there are always opportunities to turn them around.