Tag Archives: Change

And these children that you spit on As they try to change their worlds Are immune to your consultations They’re quite aware of what they’re goin’ through

Change is one of those words that has suffered reputational decline over the last 20 years, primarily due to overuse but also because it became code for bad shit happening for some people, and not for the others. This corporate change was often positioned as merely being strong medicine to swallow down. The only constant is change, the present changes the past, even TayTay gets in on the act with “This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change.” As someone nominally leading businesses during a period of untrammeled capitalism and the pursuit of reduced costs and higher shareholder value (or more importantly higher piles of cash for the very senior guys, and yes, always guys) I watched how those shed along the way to glory town were told to embrace the change as an opportunity. I entreated those who remained to consider the change of having half your colleagues disappear as being for the very best. I was of course complicit because the senior guys spread the wealth a little and we all have families and mortgages to keep our backbone stiffened. Human Relations, which was one of the few places you ever saw a female senior executive in a large financial corporation, seemed to have lots of ready-to-go letters and offers of career counseling for the poor humans for which the company had decided they no longer wanted to enjoy a long term relationship with.
Society always reflects only a snapshot in time and the temptation is always to see the existing status quo as better than what came before and to be more comforting generally than the unknown future. The problem is that we rarely get to choose which bits we change. We would all like the world to be a fairer more equitable place and we would presumably all like the world to cease being destroyed by our human efforts and those are great grounds for change.
Sadly the only change that we seem to be presented with is a variant on something new to consume. We cannot seem to change the rampage of industry and its emissions and the breaching of the climate thresholds, we cannot change the political system that is cosseted and supported by the various industry interests to prevent us changing how we drive, fly, work or eat. Its not an occidental thing either, China, Korea and Japan are hardly the bywords for enlightened change although in their own quiet way the hard working women of those large, mainly homogenous, patriarchal societies are bringing a long and sustained change, they have all stopped having children.
I like change. I have a personality that treasures the novelty, seeks out the new. New treats is top of the list. New foods to enjoy, new wines to drink, new music to listen to. New places to visit. Do I want imposed change? Maybe not, but in principle I understand that we simply cannot continue as if nothing has to change significantly. Is it then a question of who is imposing the change, we have two recent examples of democratically elected governments whose judgement was at best flawed and based less on the common good and more on the wishes and peccadilloes of a select group. The Tories in the UK, or the thankfully short lived (so far!) administration of Trump imposed their vision of change. Brexit and the new Supreme Court will be around to haunt us for many years. These type of governments, primarily reactionary in nature, will never seek to drive major change for a common good, like climate change or resolving homelessness. They generally stand for and ascend to power as representing themselves as bulwarks against change rather than progenitors of systemic change, protection from someone else’s efforts for change, Obama’s effort to bring universal healthcare was a poster child for rallying the forces of fuckwittery.

I sometimes wonder whether there is a secret cabal of rich men, who all look like a cross between Jacob Rees Mogg and Mr Burns, that sit in a room in a Gentleman’s Club in Mayfair or some mansion in Greenwich, CT and agree to keep the distractions going, to stop the unknown future world of degrowth, an end to consumerism, just to maintain their fortunes in coal or oil. Then you think about all the fun that everyone is having in North Korea, how Mohdi’s vision of India includes unbreathable air for at least 60% of the population, as in 60% of the population of the largest country on earth. You think about how Ergodan’s Turkey is just now working out the downside to making concrete buildings without bothering to put in any steel reinforcing. Then think about Mr Xi or President-Chairman-Leader for Life or whatever he feels is appropriate currently, I am sure God-Head or Emperor cannot be far off, after all his very thoughts, not just his words, but his musings are sanctified and taught to all school children in China. The final death nell for the old white men cabal conspiracy is Uncle Vlad, the man with the longest tables and the biggest rallies where they have to lock the doors so no-one is seen to be leaving or not enjoying the grand gathering, where the cheering attendees are either government employees told non-attendance is a firing offense or students paid to attend. They all gather and wave the mass produced flags for his spectacular celebrations of some glorious day from Russia’s history or at least Putin’s version. The fact that these two self proclaimed “Leader of the People” met last week in a love-in to proclaim their undying mutual support a week after the ICC issued warrants for Putin’s arrest for crimes against humanity is the perfect display of how little they care about the rest of us.

Its no wonder we cannot get some positive change going when globally we seem to have enabled a fuck-wits olympics, where leaders compete with each other as to who can be the most spectacularly evil and destructive, who can do the least for their millions of citizens. The propaganda tools that have been there forever: othering, compliant religions, nationalism, are now ably assisted by those gifts that keep giving, You-Tube, Farcebook, Tik-Tok. Add in levels of oversight, supervision and incursion into the daily lives you can only think about in your worst Ai assisted nightmares. The common play seems to be building more stuff, even it does not really help in the long run. Its just to keep the inner circle happy, perhaps one of the building contracts slips their way or you keep building coal fired power stations to keep the chaps from the coal producing regions on side. China approved the construction of another 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity last year, of which they already started building 50GW of capacity. That will be popular in Australia too as those ecology-loving Aussies supply vast amounts of coal to China, the very ships that carry the coal sail through a gap in the barrier reef. The Great Barrier Reef was going to be named a Unesco Heritage site but the government actually campaigned against this honor, which fits with it being destroyed through global warming particularly through burning of coal, something you would rather support than stopping the tiny warming problem we all seem to be enjoying.

The problem is that we will probably trigger a turning point where the ocean currents shift or the ice-cap accelerates into a slushy of its former self and suddenly all these exciting ’50 year’ weather events, loved by TV stations around the world, become monthly events and the food chain breaks down. We will of course have to change then or will we? I can’t help wondering whether the rich and powerful, at that point, just double down and argue whats the point? its too late to save everyone so we will just look after our own people. Then the definition of who exactly is ‘our own people’ may have to be tweaked.

Well that went dark quickly! Time for a rest and as they say, a change is as a good as a rest. You can change your listening habits here.