The Big Question

Prospect Magazine poses its big question for 2007 to 100 top thinkers.

We asked 100 writers and thinkers to answer the following question: Left and right defined the 20th century. What's next? The pessimism of their responses is striking: almost nobody expects the world to get better in the coming decades, and many think it will get worse

Their answers are here.
A future cursed by "the tyranny of the majority" and the "end of the executive state". Most of the 100 commentators are worth a read. I liked this, for instance, from Jonathan Rée (a philosopher who gave up university teaching 5 years ago "in order to have more time to think". Wow. ).

When the 20th century began, the main emotion behind most people’s politics was hope of some kind: hope for science, for free trade, for social democracy, for national efficiency, or for world government. And with the emotion of hope came a willingness to investigate options, to analyse, and to engage in genuine, open-minded discussions with those whose views you did not share. 100 years later, the principal political emotion is indignation—against inequality, interference, insecurity, venality or the arrogance of office—and people are more interested in bearing witness to their personal moral righteousness than in engaging with alternative analyses or allowing their own judgements to be tested against those of others. We are now facing a crisis both of hope and of serious collective argument.

The Vico in me however agrees with some of the pundits who argue that the more things change the more they stay the same or with a slow turning of the ricorso of ages from divine to heroic to human. I guess we're on the road somewhere between the latter two ages which would suggest that democracy is yet to come!

Nice South Africans

Dave reminds us thus things are not all hunky dory in paradise at the moment. But whenever I think about where we've come from I am placated. This 1986 (hell that is more than 20 years ago now!) Spitting Image song - "I have never met a nice South African", certainly is ,as this reviewer points out in his solid analysis, :

"more than a little out of date now, as both Apartheid in South Africa and Spitting Image in the UK have bitten the dust. Still, it is quite revelatory of a certain period in the 1980s , and as such is worthy of a little analysis."

Even the most hardened of Aussie cricket supporters would be hard-pressed to admit that they haven't met, or couldn't imagine meeting, a nice South African somewhere along the line. (and by that I mean someone other than the only decent South African Spitting Image said we had in the 80's, Breyten Breytenbach.)

If that appealed you might well enjoy The Chicken Song, the A-side of the single that the the above song backed.

AND NOW FOR SOME SERIOUS ADVICE FROM ME. Please read this piece by Breyten Breytenbach.

Nothing of the above can blur the questions we ought to ask ourselves within Africa in order to release a creative and transformative imagination. I know we think that to admit to our horrors - of our making, our responsibility - is traitorous since it may well reinforce racist type-casting. It will betray the struggle, it is often averred. Also, self-assessment will deprive us of the comfort of being victims of history, of colonialism, of racism, of capitalism, of socialism, of our own innocence and inherent goodness...

We need to start from the terrible and bitter recriminations which recognize that we have by now descended from liberatory euphoria to the heart of darkness. We need to admit that the nation-state concept as existing in Africa at present, accommodating rapacious local elites and corrupt and cynical foreign companies only, is not viable. The democracy which has spread over us, even when sweetened by the poison of elections, is killing us. We need to admit that foreign development aid is not helping us. We know that Africa has to refounded on radical new premises, informed by genuine autonomy and independence - and this is neither the task nor the responsibility of the world out there. We know we need a revolution in ethics, in commitment to the needs of the continent, in paring back our inflated rhetoric and our demagogic posturing.

And a parting comment from Leonard Fleming's short story, "The Man Who Went Away"(1929), in an old 2003 post of mine.

Strange how anybody living in a land of great spaces, great distances, great mountains, could become so narrow minded, shutting one's eyes to the good and the best and only seeing the worst. Perhaps it was the fault of the politicians, so many of them took only the narrow outlook, saw only the worst instead of the best, that must react upon the community :it must sub-consciously affect a people.

Well, no more narrow outlook for him: he had seen the world now, had lived under other conditions in other lands; he knew that he was jolly well off where he was now and that the country would continue to develop and progress as it had from the beginning. There would, of course, be checks and setbacks and disappointments from time to time, but in the long run it would grow and expand, as all healthy babies grow and expand.

Fleeting visit

And so, I emerge, ever so briefly from exhaustion, from spreadsheets and unreconciled reconciliations to say a cheery "Hi" to the blog world.

An interesting article here (via unfogged.com) by Meghan O'Rourke at Slate.com.

The new generation of "college kids" is now the "hooking up generation". Really not much different from my early 90's campus life. And as O'Rourke so keenly puts it.

From at least the 1920s (when everyone thought flappers were destroying manners) on through the 1980s (when teen pregnancy rates had everyone alarmed), girls have been hearing that their sex lives are the symbol of generational decadence.

I wouldn't hesitate to suggest that this commodius vicus of recirculation originates way earlier than that.

What has happened in the last month or so? Britney now has no hair*, Bobby Skinstad has a mohawk and a bit of game time for the Sharks, & Harry Potter has no kit on at all.

I am however, just the same as ever - just severely distracted by the pressing need to get some clarity of where and how things stand in my company.

5 months ago I was battling Johannesburg traffic and peddling my dubious skills by the hour for my global master, all work subject to rigorous review. Now, gone is the timekeeping and traffic but I remain under the thumb of a hard task master - all manner of skills being drawn on - a one man, most of the company buck stops at me kind of role. Hiring, retrenching, buying, selling, bargaining, budgeting and unpacking the level of risk that my messy forefathers in this organization left for me. Scorpions under every rock that I dare upend and a flood of cash flowing through a hole somewhere that I have to find before I can plug.

My previous post refers: do I really have any choice at this? Am I predetermined to slave away at my desk, delicately squeezing in what little leisure and family time I can afford to. Could I really tell my boss to bugger off, I'll finish the budget when I have the time. No, hell no. I have no choice. To blog or not blog? I have no choice. I do it when I can. I can only do it when my brain lines up the signals in the right way and lets me do it. A mere treadmill, but one worth deceiving oneself that we have a choice whether to make the most of it or not.

And this children's book furore is a whole lot of balls.

"Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much," the book continues. "It sounded medical and secret, but also important."

"The word is just so delicious," Ms. Patron said. "The sound of the word to Lucky is so evocative. It's one of those words that's so interesting because of the sound of the
word."

No promises (I have no choice, remember) but hope to back a bit more regularly from here on in.

* check out the bald memorabilia on eBay. Many quick to the bandwagon offering shaved dolls - It's a hoot.

+ as an even more circuitous aside - I arrived at unfogged via the unablogger (who has sadly slowed up his cheesecake delivery to an erratic trickle). Strange being, this internet thing.