Lewis Lapham on Davos in NYC

["John Gelles" <johng@xxxxxxxxxx>]

CHRISTIANITY, NATIONALISM, COLONIALISM,
 SOCIALISM, FREE-TRADE FUNDAMENTALISM

    The above deep belief systems are relevant to
    Lewis Lapham's insightful review of Davos in NYC.
    His essay begins on page 7 of April 2002 issue of
    Harpers, where Lapham is the top editor.

    His title is "Leviathan", harking back to Thomas
    Hobbes book of the same name. Hobbes saw
    the state (and political economy) as a machine
    assembled by man. There is today a global rule,
    not unlike a state as defined by Hobbes, which
    Lapham fears inherits the freedom of the state to
    destroy lives and all around it--including itself.

    His bottom line: (quoting George Soros), "The
    global economy is inherently unstable, dependent
    on what people wish for, not what they have in
    hand, and is therefore impossible to maintain in
    in a state of equilibrium:
        left to its own devices, it doesn't know
        how to do anything else but destroy itself."

    Butressing the bottom line, in his own words,
    Lapham says:
        "[Attending conferees, (of the CEO turn
    of mind,)] accustomed to believing themselves
    masters, not the servants, of the brute mechanism
    that generates the wealth of nations, assumed that
    the mechanism could be invested with Christian
    scruples and trained to walk on a leash; it did not
    occur to them that it (their beloved free market)
    was as mindless as a ball bearing, bereft of the
    capacity for human speech or conscious thought.
        "Confronted with a thing instead of a man, the
    Americans were as helpless as the Europeans
    when brought before the thrones of judgement
    bound only by the mechanics of profit and loss."


        Well there we have it. VOW is up against a
    brute mechanism, a self destructive purpose, a
    prisoner of its own myopic view of profit and
    loss, with no conscience, vision or values.

        Perhaps it is nothing new. We the European
    race, have been victims of unquestioned belief in
    the instituions that grew among men who claimed
    Christianity, nationalism, colonialist capitalism,
    socialism, and now global free tradism, as their
    inspiration. Virtually all Asians have joined us,
    although their past varies from our own.

        And we are confronted, not by our own better
    natures, but by envious Islamic fanatics with too
    much oil and not enough freedom.

        I strongly recommend Lapham's full essay.
    He would clearly endorse a victory over want
    but might wonder if anything today suggests it's
    in the cards.

        He notes the commercial profits that have
    flown from 9-11, in Super Bowl ads and
    the weapons trade. But the import of his
    thought is that these profits will not seek to
    finance investment to conquer want or even
    terrorism. They will run into the wide river
    meandering toward self-destruction.

        Now that Davos has left New York, and
    its shadow is gone from Puerto Alegre, we  here
    on the web at VOW have time to take stock of
    our mission and our method.

        How often to we go to our website? How
    much use do we make of its content?  Is a
    conference as big Davos or Puerrto Alegre the
    thing we most admire?

        Davos, of course, was the tip of an
    iceberg of billions of dollars.The charitable
    work of the berg competes daily with its
    mindless competitive actions to dominate
    an industry or subvert another nation.
    On balance, Davos is tied to the decisions
    of George Bush until his dicisions solve
    an intractable problem--or make it worse.

        Puerto Alegre is the multi-cause home
    for every aggrieved segment of society.
    It is where people like us cry foul-- in a
    hall so full of cries none can heard to lead
    a campaign to put mindless profit and loss
    to work on behalf of VOW and VOH
    (victory over hate).

        Over the long struggle ahead, to last for
    a thousand years, I see the internet today,
    and a semantic net tomorrow, as places
    to pioneer the VOW agenda.

        Why go to Switzerland or Brazil when
    our cell phones will soon put us at a table
    where we can see everyone whose talking,
    preserve what's being said, and interact,
    ourselves, with any and every phrase that
    sounds off-key in our head?