The West has anointed a new rescuer. His name is Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, a better version of Americans from the North American culture hearth.
The praises for Carney’s speech at Davos extend well beyond the political level, with many comments such as: “EU leaders would do well to meditate on the seminal lesson that the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, delivered at this year’s World Economic Forum.”
By all means EU leaders should think on Carney’s speech, but meditate on it? That’s a category error. And who cares about EU leaders except Europeans, and from what I gather, not even them?
What about humanity? How many women, for example, will respond to another man’s “seminal” lesson?
Carney is correct, as far as it goes, in his diagnosis that “the western-led rules-based international order is not coming back.”
But his prescription offers a false choice: “In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice — compete with each other for favor, or combine to create a third path with impact.”
The idea that liberal democratic “middle powers” such as Canada and European countries can build ad hoc coalitions to defend the principles of territorial integrity (aka “sovereignty”), the rule of law, free trade, climate action and human rights falls woefully short of the quickening human crisis at all levels and on all fronts.
And it simply isn’t serious for commentators to suggest that the way ahead for the west, much less humankind, is some version of Carney’s “hedging strategy that Canada is already pursuing, diversifying its trade and supply chains and opening its market to Chinese electric vehicles.”
The world is being driven into hell by a demented narcissist with his finger on the nuclear button. With all due respect to Mark Carney, he and “the liberal democracies” can’t fill the leadership vacuum at the political level, much less adequately respond to the underlying spiritual and philosophical collapse across cultures and countries.
Is there anything happening beyond accelerated destruction in all three interwoven dimensions — spiritual, philosophical and political?
It certainly isn’t tangible or visible at this point. And there may well be nothing but a global downward spiral occurring, beginning with the integrated systems, animals and plants of the earth.
But without mindlessly placing one’s faith in some imagined deity, or foolishly putting one’s faith in human nature, one can and must retain a modicum of trust in humanity and the human prospect.
Nothing can be done if we confine ourselves to the political level however. Carney rightly defined international relations as “a rupture, not a transition.” But the rupture is much deeper and more widespread than to the threadbare transatlantic alliance, or the obsolete international order.
The rupture is in the very notion of human progress and the ideal of reason upon which western (and in recent decades global) civilization has turned for the last three centuries, since the so-called Enlightenment.
The rupture is at the core level of human consciousness, in our relationship with nature, and in our identity as a species.
The rupture is due to the divisive and cumulative fragmentation produced by the unintelligent use of “higher thought.”
People all over the world rightly feel that they’re being tossed on a roiling sea of uncertainty. There is tremendous anxiety, which is giving rise to impulsive hopes and delusional wishful thinking.
The human need to know how things are going to turn out, and to believe things are going to be okay is strong. However if one remains with the fact of uncertainty and the discomfort of ‘I don’t know,’ anxiety greatly diminishes.
Then there’s an emotional steadiness and even a passionate curiosity about what is happening in the world, and whether something besides the increasing darkness and chaos of man (and not just one man) is at work.
The hard truth however, is that without a revolution at the core of human consciousness things will only get worse, and when they hit bottom we won’t be able to change course, in our age at least.
The center cannot hold. There are no half-measures at the local or global political level that can buy more time for the status quo. Self-knowing people urgently need to question together and ignite insight beyond useless beliefs, ideals and opinions.
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