---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kanth, Rajani <[email protected]> Date: Mon, May 18, 2015 at 12:18 PM Subject: From r To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> *The Threat Du Jour* It is, regrettably, a veritable *Age of Extremes*. By now, we all likely know the banal fact that the ‘highest stage’ of Socialism may very well be *Neo-Liberalism.* But what we may not have known is that the ultimate stage of* Capitalism* may actually be an unabashed *Neo-Feudalism.* In fact, why would it stop there? I have always maintained that the Modernist sloganeering of ‘rights’ , the Enlightenment onwards, was specious, in the extreme, *vis a vis* the disempowered strata (inclusive of women). Way things are going, there may be even ‘higher’ stages to come, like the reinvention of *Slavery.* Indeed, ex-colonial world sweatshops that produce for European elite consumption today are but a fig leaf removed from conditions approximating slavery. Leave it to our able US/UK Modernists to rush us back into Antiquity , on rocket-propelled roller skates. I said *Antiquity*: but let us recall that the US brazenly practiced that venerable institution in the* modern *era, not in some antic past, and ‘gave it up’ only by the slimmest of margins. Even today, not all political forces in the US , as is obvious, have ‘given it up’, leastways in their minds. A Nation-wide poll on the issue might well confirm this hunch. So, as with* Capitalism* (of the dominant , Anglo-Am kind) the inspiration for such innovating novelties remains the *fons* *et* *origo* : the * Brutish I*sles, and their far-flung Atlantic/Pacific Progeny. *Yes, as an Indian I call that wretched polity – its ruling elites being the target - the Brutish Isles: what they did to that unfortunate sub-continent, over two centuries, is , in sheer scale, so outrageous that no reparations are ever possible. * *It is not in the ‘playing fields of Eton’, as is fancied, but in the killing fields of Ireland, India, and North America – to say nothing of innumerable other regions across this globe - that the Brits cut their martial teeth.* And yet these imperial polities set themselves up, even in these latter days, as paragons of *human rights.* The *Other* Europeans, today, are largely reduced to being no more than docile or disgruntled camp-followers, having long given up any hope for any real *autonomy* ( with the exception of France, perhaps). So, the wonderful folk who gave us all the cumulative glories of Colonialism, Imperialism, Capitalism, and Neoliberalism, are now about to give us all a taste for something new*: human extinction*. No, this is not hyperbole. Let me explain. I have done a book called the *Post-Human Society*: it waited 20 years to find a publisher. No Anglo-Am publisher would touch it. It now has, at long last, a German imprint. You get it, I’m sure: * anyone who challenges hegemony is a ( branded) pariah(which, incidentally, is fine by me: as a self-sufficing Brahmin, I hardly need, let alone crave, such indifferent company. Borrowing from Kipling: I have a ‘neater, sweeter,’ set of communal norms and ideals, drawn from a ‘cleaner, greener’ civilizational source. The soul, as Emily Dickinson wrote, selects her own society)*. At any rate , I argue there that the US is the bellwether of the *Global 1984 <1984>* to come, constituting an* Amoral* *Society,* across the board: a ‘society’ where the antic distinction between the moral and the immoral is losing both meaning and significance. It is another way of saying that anthropic society- which is based firmly on* morality* – is all set to give up the ghost amongst the Late European formations. It is another heroic Anglo-Am ‘first’ in history, like the Atom Bomb - amongst a few other such deeply merit-laden accomplishments. As always, the *in-house* critics , being no more than a mere *loyal Opposition*, have it all wrong: it is not the fact that the world is being polarized between 0.001 % and All the Rest, in *wealth*, that is at all remarkable. That sells Monsieur Piketty, all over the map, of course: but no more. *Rule by the few* , based on the expropriation of social wealth, is the norm in all predatory societies, the consecrated myths of ‘democracy’ notwithstanding. What is really remarkable is that anthropic society is being , in evolutionary terms, *arrested.* An *amoral society* is not an anthropic society at all, *but a contractual, Eurocentric, rational-legal , entity*, the fitting complement to the* beggar-thy-neighbor* economy. It will harbinger a dire estrangement, and occlusion, of *affective ties and ethical norms* globally, such that a homogenized, standardized, deculturalised, dehumanized, *barbarism* can flourish unchecked by received human propensities. It is also remarkable that Europeans have thought themselves to be possessed of the very acme of* civilization, * at the very instance of adopting the very *Tools of Barbarism* that are now part of the EuroModernist Legacy forced on all, everywhere. I have done a couple of books on that subject (listed below), so I will not trouble to detail it here. No, double-entry bookkeeping, and the compounding of interest, are *not* the momenta of civilization, but simply the unmistakable markers of being, inexorably, on the loping , low road to *Nihilism.* *Materialism *(in its wild, rampant, Anglo-Am vein) is the very antithesis of the *Convivial Moment * that marks the *possibility* of civilization amongst us hominids. The *Convivial promise* is innate in the province of *maternity and child-rearing*, making for a hallowed social space, howsoever brief and circumscribed, free from male violence and aggression. *Indeed, that domain is the real provenance of virtually all of anthropic morality.* Admittedly, that promise, slight as it was, was always severely constrained by the predations of masculinist violence and aggression that *homo heirarchicus *– a more accurate term than the abjectly self-serving ‘*homo sapiens’* - shares, liberally, with Chimpanzees. It is unfortunate that, as a species, we did not take after our worthy Bonobo cousins, instead, who might have served as a far worthier template. For that reason, our few success stories, *simple tribal societies with a matrilineal bent*, soon gave way to dissolution *via* the familiar exit of *empire.* *The Patriarchical male is an Oligarch, and lives (and dies) by an Iron Law of Oligarchy.* It is this ineluctable fact that, at base, vitiates the various feeble attempts at *democracy* (and *pacifism)* –when serious at all in *intent* - that have been tried. It is also that trait that unites US militarism to Afghan tribalism, in the attitude and ideology of primal *machismo*. The tribal Afghan, of course, like his American counterpart , needs no instruction in *violence:* but has not yet learnt to embrace the doctrines of unmitigated *greed* - and will doubtless be taught that elevating social grace at the coming rash of American Universities that will flourish there, soon, if it all unfolds as per plan. But the *Post-Human society* – meaning the *Amoral Society* – is not a *terminus,* by any means: it is but the stepping stone to another , far more egregious climacteric- the *TransHuman Society*, that will not merely arrest evolution but annihilate it altogether. So, mere barbarism is not to be a secure resting place: it will be, in the not-so-distal future, a *universe of androids.* Ask yourself: who today, are the supreme world leaders in arms, in wars, in cloning, in transgenetics, in greed, in desensitisation, in militarism, in nuclear testing, in reckless global destabilization: and the answer is patently *unequivocal.* *The fetishism of technology, in context of a system run wholly on behalf of privateers and profiteers, leaves no other option*: beginning with embedded chips , it will enlarge to all manner of vital displacements - *of the human by the machine*. It might also be instructive, here, *en passant*, to inquire as to just how many years the US and the UK have refrained from active *warfare *– including the planning/preparation of it - in the past two centuries? Not *Pax *Britannica or *Pax *Americana , therefore, but* Bellum* Britannica, *etc.*, may be the more appropriate term. No surprise, really: science, technology, intelligence , are all a colossal waste , indeed become a gathering *threat to their own societies*, if not accompanied by the *positive checks* of anthropic ethics, morality, kinship and community. Given the triumphalist destruction of the latter, under the various *diktats *of EuroModernism – celebrated fatuously as the paraphernalia of ‘freedom’ - all that is left us is domination by a small coterie, a rabid collation of sociopaths and psychopaths who will ‘lead’ us all, assuredly, into a certain, even predictable, damnation. If we let them. *Absit Omen.* REFERENCES R.Kanth, *Breaking With the Enlightenment, *Humanities, 1997 _______, *Against Eurocentrism*, Macmillan, 2005 ________ *The Post-Human Society,( Forthcoming)*, De Gruyter, 2015 *[©RKanth,2015]* -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/