 illustration by A.J. Garces |
does it mean
when American kids can play I-Net games with French kids, but can’t find Paris
on the map? It means that the world’s at their fingertips but not in their
heads. As for grown-ups, who say very grown-up things about the globalization
of culture: e-mailing about your favorite topics with folks in Australia and
Poland is no more “global” than pen-paling. If the word “culture” has any
meaning, there is no globalization of culture. All that’s really happened is
that ignorance has become more glib.
What does it mean when an educated American knows only scattered bits of
information? It means you can’t elect a representative to express your
political will; you must content yourself with voting for agents who do what
they please on global issues of which you know zip. Call that “democracy” if
you want to. What you call it doesn’t matter since, without knowledge, it’s
utterly out of your hands.
Where can you get the knowledge? Most American dailies and all its so-called
“alternative” weeklies leave global analysis to CNN, Time, Newsweek, The
Washington Post, The New York Times — all of whom treat global matters the
same. It’s “news” if there’s a juicy crisis, or if an American official visits
a foreign capital. The Post and Times bury more contextual
coverage deep in their pages. None run regular features that attempt to show
the relationship of one bit of information to another.
Without context, a piece of information is just a dot. It floats in your brain
with a lot of other dots and doesn’t mean a damn thing. Knowledge is
information-in-context — connecting the dots. Making your own map. Otherwise
we become dots, floating in a global soup. It is difficult to imagine a
dot being free.
Here, then, for purposes of discussion, is a contextual map of the globe.
Crude indeed, but it may serve to make a point. Country by country, area by
area:
Russia. The government can’t collect taxes — most people and
businesses don’t pay them, and there’s no enforcement. Scant taxes mean scant
services and an army that’s poorly clothed, housed, and fed. Thus all those
nukes are barely protected and up for grabs. Urban economies are mostly black
market, controlled by a fragmented and warring underworld. In other words, the
idea that “the former Soviet Union” is a country — is a fiction. It’s in a
state of near anarchy, with no central organization. All those stories about
Yeltsin? In these circumstances, they mean next to nothing.
China. The coastal regions are booming, but there’s dire poverty in
much of the interior — and, as the CEO of General Motors says, “the roads are
currently missing.” Pause at that: A nuclear power without roads. How can a
country without roads become the commercial giant of the 21st century? Locally,
power is corrupt and unregulated — ask anyone who’s tried to do business
there. Warlords are reasserting themselves where the government is hesitant or
afraid to deploy the army. Yet headlines speak of China as a coherent,
purposeful power.
United States. Stocks boom while the middle-class works two or three
jobs to make do. Roughly 1% of the people own most of the resources. A higher
percentage of the population is incarcerated than in the Soviet Union and South
Africa during their worst days. Nobody gets elected without the backing of the
very rich, and politicians are brazenly refusing to change that. Race relations
are so bad that a grotesque and absurd trial is enough to polarize everyone.
While a fifth of its economy is spent on “defense” (against whom?), its
citizens are snowed into paying for a system of information through which most
of their input will soon be transmitted into their homes through one “line” or
outlet — an outlet under the control of executives whom they don’t elect and
barely know the names of.
So much for the most “powerful” nations. They are unable to regulate (much
less control) the three most profitable enterprises on earth: the global
traffic in arms, drugs, and oil. Arms facilitate our constant wars; drugs are
the catalyst of most violent crime; and oil is the fuel, the root, of modern
life. All three are beyond the reach of any individual or collective political
franchise. It is absurd to speak of “freedom” in this context. The “great
powers” are in control of little but their ability to make “news.” Their
citizens control even less.
Swiftly, the rest of the world:
Africa. Except for South Africa, it’s a continent of famine, plague,
and war, where countries have names but no central organization and no central
culture. No power on earth has the resources to intervene or even supply
sufficient food and medicine. In a word: Hell.
Europe. France… wracked by factionalism and strikes, but with a solid
culture underlying all. Several eastern countries … tens and hundreds of
thousands in the streets for the last several months, all their issues still
unresolved. Germany… economically huge, but reeling from unification and
unable to exert itself on the world stage. (Considering Germany’s history,
that’s not so bad.) The northern states… keeping to themselves, as usual and
very sanely. Italy… 50 governments in 50 years, but somehow it’s become the
fifth largest industrial force in the world; always chaotic (because it’s
Italian), yet peaceful; a mysterious, marvelous anomaly. England… little to
show for a lot of noise. So after spending 500 years ruining the world, savvy
and sinister old Europe is trying to tend its own garden, trusting the
so-called great powers (China, Russia, America) to ruin themselves and leave
Europe to step into the vacuum.
Japan. A strong central government and economy, but still in the
position that moved it to war in 1941 — dependent on resources far beyond its
borders and control.
India. It’s India, not Hollywood, that has the largest movie industry
in the world. It’s India, not China, that has the densest population per acre.
Indescribable poverty. Corrupt government. Nuclear capability. Unable to assert
itself within itself, much less to the world. Again: chaos, barely under
wraps, with nukes for sale.
The Pacific Rim. Most of its governments are bought and paid for by
American and European corporations, leading their people into the deathly life
of barely paid wage slavery, manufacturing First World products. Will those
peoples rise and demand their rights? There are many Op-Ed pieces to that
effect, but they don’t say that if those people demand what’s theirs, our
prices go will go up — with a ripple effect that would devastate the American
economy. (Yes: We are again living off slavery.)
Mexico. Mexico City, not Hollywood, is the world’s largest producer of
television programming. But otherwise Mexico is an enormous resource for the
United States. Cheap labor. Easy and profitable trade. Drugs. Its officials are
corrupt beyond description (its drug czar has been jailed for working for a
drug gang). There are at least two openly revolutionary movements that can
neither be suppressed nor negotiated with. A boil ready to burst.
South America. Even Brazil, the largest and most resourceful of its
countries, can’t control its poverty or sufficiently organize its capacities.
Many of its other countries (especially Colombia) are in effect ruled by drug
gangs and/or North American industries and/or are wracked by factions. There is
no sign of continental leadership or coherence — which means continued
subservience to the so-called First World, a world which can’t control
itself.
The Middle East. The relentless round of essentially tribal wars have
lasted centuries, demeaning everyone concerned. They’d be throwing sand at each
other if not for our arms dealers. A sure headline-grabber, but how important
to anyone except themselves? The not-so-very-great powers secretly know their
own weakness, so they keep this region unstable in order to prevent its oil
interests from calling the shots. Otherwise: a petty religious war that goes
against the tenets of all the concerned religions.
Our media reports all this as though each crisis is a separate aberration in a
normal state of affairs. Actually, we’re witnessing a state of chaos and
helplessness such as has not existed since the Middle Ages. Some dreamers are
saying computers are going to change all this. Do you know how to spell “fat
chance”?
We have entered a new Middle Ages, a time of plagues, famines, violence,
extreme class disparity, and religious fanaticism — and also (as in the late
Middle Ages) a time of profound discovery and change. A time when it is
terribly important, and often dangerous, to preserve values and knowledge — to
stand up for visions that most of this crazed world often can’t comprehend or
tolerate.
The value of having an inner map of the world as it is (not as it’s
broadcasted) is this: It allows you to know that your task is larger than
yourself. For if you choose, just by virtue of being a decent person you are
entrusted with passing on something of value through a dark crazy time —
preserving your integrity, in your way, by your acts and your very breathing,
for those who will build again when this chaos exhausts itself. People who
assume the burden of their own integrity are free — because integrity
is freedom, and (as Nelson Mandela proved) its force can’t be quelled
even when jailed. The future lives in our individual, often lonely, and
certainly unprofitable acts of integrity, or it doesn’t live at all.
This article appears in February 28 • 1997 and February 28 • 1997 (Cover).