Quick aside: I have been beating the ‘community drum’ of late and I want to talk more about that but I hate to be a bore.  One topic – 3 blogs, four at most – and then I have to go on to something else.  You just have to throw in a change-up or else attention wanes.  We are children of the TV age, after all.

So, just a quick thought about ‘conflict of interests’ or ‘global dissonance’ or ‘mixed messages’.  The real theme of these 1000 words is: “What the hell is really going on and who is doing it?”  The topic was prompted by Time Magazine choosing the ‘protester’ as the person of the year.  They could just as easily have chosen the invisible protester but, of course, it is hard to get a picture of them. 

I am as confused as anyone or everyone else about what is going on and who is doing it.  No real epiphanies here.  But I do have a few thoughts on why there is a sense of instability in the air, a sense of things careening out of control and why no one seems to have a sense of where it is all heading.

You know what this opinion is worth, right?

The world’s economy is on a globalization cycle.  It does that every fifty years or so.  But, of course, this is the BIG one.  All globalization cycles start with technological advances and this one was no exception.  Computer age = another attempt at Imperialism.  Got an edge?  Use it to take over the world. The US had the tech edge and the power to use it (military).  So, like all good Imperialists, they threw themselves (and all of us) into globalization efforts.  GO USA!

After building up the ‘gunboats’ and defeating the alternative (communism), they imposed the WTO and the IMF.  Tools of mass economization.  They already had the US dollar (the never-ending fountain of wealth).  Countries had to drop their tariffs and laws and rules and procedures and adopt ‘international ones’ for the sake of free trade.  And all countries need some trade.  But ‘some’ isn’t good enough.  “If you ain’t with us, you are a’gin us!” (Bush)

Makes some sense, I suppose.  If trade is the only measure one uses for defining and creating a ‘good healthy life’. And let’s be fair: Americans do seem to put a lot of value on the almighty buck.  Health, they think, can be bought or surgically added or removed later.

And one of the ways for free trade to be deep-throated down the maws of other governments is to push for democratic reforms.  Democracy as a catalyst.  Through ‘change’ they could get the old cobwebs out of the way and new WTO/IMF procedures would follow.  GO DEMOCRACY!  (It helps to demonize those who are anti-democracy even when they aren’t. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has been democratically elected 13 times and counting and yet FOX news calls him a dictator.)

Dissonance: The Chinese aren’t democratic and their economy has grown pretty fast.  Big Media gives the thriving Chinese dictators a pass.  Go figure.

Who really knows?

Finally, we have the genuine and natural forces of nationalism.  In fact, stronger than ‘nationalism’ is ‘culturalism’ but that term is not universally recognized or used in this way.  Mind you, you can see it in Canada quite clearly.  We are Canadians when it comes to hockey and medicare but we are First Nations, Maritimers, French, Westerners and ‘Multi-culturals’ for much of everything else.  GO CANADA (the elusive and ephemeral)!

But we sell our oil to the US for less than we pay for it as citizens.  And we buy US made jets that come without engines. And we do as we are told (See Canada re Kyoto).

Are we really still a nation?  Or are we just an undeclared 51st state with a lot of different cultures celebrating different holidays?  Are we the first nation-casualty of Globalization?

I think so.  Well, there is Puerto Rico, I guess.  And maybe Mexico.  But we are close.

The point: you can’t have your nation or your culture and eat and spend globally, too.  In fact, you can’t have your globalization and your democracy either.  Globalization means homogenization.  See the effect of the Euro.

In fact, before the euro-influence example there was – as illustration – the not-so-subtle influence of ‘the Westernization effect’ by way of the US dollar.  And Western influence became a form of globalization by replacing ‘other’ culture with Hollywood, Nikes and war.  And that was all made possible by making the US dollar the ‘common denominator’ of all commodities.  Ya wanna ‘take over the world’?  Then ‘take over’ the currency first.   

But enough about that.  Bottom line: you can’t have nationalism/culture, globalization and democracy all thriving at the same time.  Can’t happen.  And trying to do that is causing a universal dissonance.  That dissonance is showing up financially, culturally, nationally and now in your everyday life.  We, the people, are starting to feel the ‘discomfort’ of conflicting global ideologies.  Throw a diseased and corrupt capitalistic economic model into the mix and the BIG picture is seen to be losing focus completely.  We are a three-eyed species with each eye requiring a different optical prescription.  It’s a blur out there.  We are confused.

So what do people do when they are confused?  Why, they go back to the basics, of course.  Start again from step one.  Start over.  Go slow.  Learn to walk all over again.  And guess what?  We are doing that!  See the ‘slow food’ movement.  See the ‘local diet’ movement.  Organic.  Artisan-ship.  Community.  Thinking local.

There is a subtle and immeasurable move away from BIG institutions, BIG corporations, BIG everything.  People who are confused are spending more time in their garden.  THAT they get. They aren’t reading BIG media anymore.  They aren’t even watching BIG TV as much.  People are voting and revolting by stepping back.

And there is no problem with that.  If 7 billion people reject THE HUGE, reject THE GLOBAL WAY, reject respectfully what the other 6 billion are doing, they may just be able to rescue us from this chaos.  Little bits at a time.  Small locales.  Mini trade.

In effect, they are saying: “Let’s clean up our own backyard first and plant something in it.  It’s a start.  You young ones?  Go ‘occupy’ something!”