Thomas Piketty: a fundamental supplemental

I have decided to start blogging sections of my book, particularly if they are topical or I need feedback. In this case, it is both. Keep in mind the following context for this blog: I had just completed, or so I thought, my work on what wealth inequality actually was, just two weeks before Piketty made himself known to me. This blog represents a messy first draft of what turned into a reformatting nightmare, but as you'll see, it was definitely worth it. Also, keep in mind this is just but one sub-section of my book, one application of the same theory applied across all of culture and history; you are thus missing all of the theoretical basis, and definitions/re-definition, that comprise chapters 1 & 2. Don't be surprised therefore if some terms seem to be used oddly, or in a new context.  If anyone wants to read them btw, 90% of the book is done, so feel free to ask.

Thomas Piketty - a fundamental supplemental.

I first heard about the nature of wealth's power law distribution, and I imagine its feedback-loop quality of money-begatting-money, a long time ago. Yet it wasn’t until coming to write this book that I began to express my idea as feedback loops. As a consequence of this, I wasn’t satisfied in the slightest by my attempt I showed you in the very first chapter of this book. What was influence? What was opportunity?

(NOTE: I have had to roughly recreate the flow-diagrams illustrating feedback loops, since they won't format in this blog...)

 WEALTH INEQUALITY

increases                     increases

OPPORTUNITY             INFLUENCE

increases

Why then did I leave it in? Well, I had intended to leave it in as evidence of my workings toward identifying the more fundamental feedback loop that almost immediately came to replace it. Then along came one Thomas Piketty.

Surprisingly, Piketty has managed to turn doctrinal, ideological, neoliberal economic mythology on its head using evidence. Only this time, he has used lots of evidence, in a way that simply cannot easily be dismissed. That it took this long for a book of this nature to come out is simply staggering, but not surprising. Even History has a way better track record in interpreting the past, but then, they have way more history of self-reflection, an entire academic field of it in Historiography, to draw upon. I don’t know if there is even such a thing as ‘economography’, is there? Nevertheless Piketty has done what someone else soon would have (there is probably a young economist or several currently shredding their research in despair at what might have been), and sufficiently convinced enough economists, using their own language and their own cultural identity, of at least the potential that their corporately derived beliefs might be false. This is why.

First, I have to make a confession. I haven’t read the book. How the hell could I? I didn’t hear about it until I was 55,000 words into this book, my work on wealth inequality supposedly complete. Now, please don’t take this for the arrogance that will inevitably appear in some of your minds, but when I read the expert commentary on Piketty’s book, I didn’t see anything new. What I did immediately see was that his findings corroborated exactly with my own, only inherently limited in a number of ways. Allow me to explain why it is that what Piketty has done is describe the dynamic of wealth inequality. What I have done, and will subsequently show, is to explain the dynamic of wealth inequality. In fact, complexity theory can, as ever, sum up what I mean best, and in one sentence:

You cannot explain emergent properties solely through recourse to the specific characteristics of said emergent properties; you must describe the complex system from which the emergent property emerges.

In other words, you cannot explain economics with economics. You can only describe it, in the best language we know how, the language economics uses to describe itself. This is called a category error, a logical fallacy prevalent within the field of economics; students are even revolting against the idea of doctrinal textbooks that don’t describe reality in university. You can only explain economics by describing society as a whole, for it is this from which the emergent properties, which all economic activity is, emerge. Economics does inherently realise this at a fundamental level, it is just that the doctrine that still survives to this day, the dichotomy of Keynesian and Freidmanite economics, was born of a time when we did not have complexity to outline the scale of what it was they thought they were achieving. It was pre-computers for crying out loud, what possible hope did they have of coming to non-ideological, non-politicised conclusions about the most complex sodding system known in the entire universe?!

You think climate modelling is hard? Economics is the emergent property of nested complex systems, that include the most complex object known in the universe, the brain, as each of its systemic nodes. The data required to understand it is potentially there, everything is digital bar the informal economies (a not unimportant point, as I will come to later), but we have such an incomplete conceptual framework analysing the data that it has taken until 2014 for an economist to prove what generations of activists have been screaming for years, globally: neoliberalism doesn’t work for the greater good. Period.

It is no coincidence that the two extremes so easily mirror the socialist tendencies of the state (the social contract, for what it was worth though in times of fundamental balance, it can lead to equality), and the profit-driven necessities of corporatism (Friedman's neoliberalist monster). Economics was never a science, and can never be hoped to be taken as one now that they are starting to get the tools so long as those economists embracing complexity continue to fail in speaking out against their powerful peers, the ones they read about in the textbooks… urgh, it’s hardly surprising is it?

Piketty’s inequality curve.

Anyway, I digress. The thing that really struck me about Piketty, though again more for the fact of the synchronicity than anything, was the fact that he had identified the same curve to inequality that I had, only he had identified just one transitional phase of inequality. Because Piketty is an economist, and not a sociologist, or psychologist, or historian, he has been pre-conditioned to think in terms of capitalism, not corporatism, or anything else for that matter, he attributes all of the emergent properties of ‘capitalism’ - that is, economics - to capitalism itself. Yet capitalism is just an idea, an unattainable, abstract ideal that somehow feels able to reduce within itself all of human behaviour. Yet trade, commerce, money, jobs; these are all but facets of the overall whole, society, from which the emergent property of economics, or capitalism if you prefer, emerges. Again, you cannot explain an emergent property by treating it as it’s own, closed system, which is exactly what economists are doing by reducing all of human behaviour into its own cultural identity framework, thus eliminating all other identities, from all the other scales, in all their various, complex forms, from their models.

Traditionally, economics, and in particular macroeconomics, had always assumed that equality would rise as developed nations reached a stage of mature capitalism. As with every established assumption about macroeconomics, it was based on flawed theory and/or inaccurate data/research, born of a time before we have the tools to adequate study such a complex system. And, as with every established assumption about capitalism, it strangely seemed to assume that the end goal of capitalism would fall on the side of the greater good. Well, what did you expect? That the rationale of power would conclude they they should tell the public that the theory that controlled and shaped their entire lives was no more than an ideologically-derived guess?

Either way, that assumption, and the highly technical concepts of rising tides and trickle-down BS that accompanies it, has done its job of convincing enough people enough of the time already. It is too late to stop corporatism becoming a fundamental identity. It doesn’t matter that Piketty has shown the dogma to be false, not for the States anyway; elsewhere will heed his and others calls after him - the Americans will just dismiss him as a French socialist, and move further into the clutches of evidence-free totalitarianism, with people clinging desperately to the myths that makes their position of inequality seem deniable (better than than admitting you were duped by your own ideological ‘brethren’ - at least, they told you they were your brethren), even as the inequality continues to rise. And as Piketty showed, rise it will continue to so.

The curve Piketty identified goes like this (according to Piketty’s theory): capitalism began highly unequally in terms of wealth inequality in the West, before entering a period of growing equality post-World War Two. Then, following free-market, neoliberal reforms in the1970’s, inequality began to rise once more until it was again at the peak of ‘early capitalism’. I will quote from Paul Mason, culture and digital editor at Channel 4 News and occasional contributor to the Guardian newspaper, on what Piketty found:

“Piketty accepts that the fruits of economic maturity – skills, training and education of the workforce – do promote greater equality. But they can be offset by a more fundamental tendency towards inequality, which is unleashed wherever demographics or low taxation or weak labour organisation allows it…

For Piketty, the long, mid-20th century period of rising equality was a blip, produced by the exigencies of war, the power of organised labour, the need for high taxation, and by demographics and technical innovation…

He notes that redistribution has become a question of "rights to" things – healthcare and pensions – rather than simply a problem of taxation rates. His solution is a specific, progressive tax on private wealth: an exceptional tax on capital, possibly combined with the overt use of inflation…

To challenge his argument you have to reject the premises of it, not the working out.”

Link here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/28/thomas-piketty-capital-surprise-bestseller

I have collected together this passage to deconstruct what I mean by Piketty’s category errors, and to take up Mason’s argument, correct as it goes, and to challenge the very premise of Piketty’s argument. The working out is fine; it is probably the first, substantial non-ideological examination of wealth inequality ever conducted, given that it has turned established “theory” on its head. Yet because of Piketty’s category error, the attribution of cause and effect is wrong. Capitalism didn’t start unequal because of capitalism, it started unequal because of the weakness of capitalism, or I should say, the weakness of corporate cultural identity.

A really simple way of showing this is as follows: if ‘capitalism’ was the ‘cause’ of high inequality pre-Second World War, when did it start being the cause of that high inequality? At some point in the past, it matters not when for this thought experiment, capitalism had to emerge; yet prior to that date, inequality was also really high, like, forever. Which begs the questions: What was the cause of inequality before capitalism? And how, where, when and why did capitalism manage to ‘take the baton’ so to speak, and become the cause?

Presented this way, and it becomes clear that there is a glaring hole, or at least a more fundamental layer to Piketty’s argument. It doesn’t matter what fundamental cultural identity holds power; if they gain a monopoly on cultural production for enough time, their rationales, justifications, and allure will inevitably, unavoidably form a constant influence in a populations cultural identity. This is the enabling environment, or lack thereof, from which economics emerges, and it should come as no surprise that a culture monopolised by exclusive propaganda creates, through the trillions of subconscious decisions made by millions of nodes, an environment that enriches themselves. It is not a conspiracy. It is not ‘evil’. It is the gradual, exponential drive to separatism caused by the ubiquity and universality of wealth's power (law) and its control over cultural production.

What Piketty meant to say, well, said but didn’t know it.

So how does one resolve the thought experiment I presented regarding capitalism's role in pre-World War Two inequality? If you were paying attention earlier in this chapter, you will already know the answer. I don’t need a graph; since the principle defies reduction, it is best put as plainly as complexity allows.

Until corporate cultural identity began to be produced on a mass scale, it necessarily follows that prior to this time, religious and state identities were more ubiquitous (there is only a limited amount of ideological capacity available). Since State emerged from Religion, and Corporate emerged from State as the monopolistic holder of cultural production on the way to becoming a fundamental cultural identity, it also follows that as corporatism grew, it diluted both state and religious cultural identity and at some point the three would have been in a period of balance. This is the post-War period Piketty speaks of. Yet before this time, corporate cultural identity could not have been responsible for high inequality. What Piketty labels as ‘capitalisms early phase’ was in fact the period of State monopolisation of cultural identity facilitating high inequality. It had been able to do so because Religion had been sidelined one way or another from public affairs, and corporatism was still in it’s early, non-threatening, subversive stage of pre-fundamental status. Yet it isn’t so clear cut as this; more nuance is required. There is more to society than the fundamental cultural identities, as I have just shown.

When the fundamental identities are balanced, acting as a check and balance through all requiring representation, it is not doing so through a solely top-down dynamic. It never is. Civil society and the fundamental cultural identities exist in cross-scale and intra-scale feedback, as one system. Given the space afforded by no one ideology holding a monopoly on power for enough time, bottom-up identities have greater freedom, emerge from a more facilitative enabling environment, to add to this drive toward more fully representative and inclusive reform. Trade unions were suppressed under the state, they are suppressed under corporatism, but in between they had influence, just one example of the many small-scale emergences that could have contributed to fair and equitable reform.

Notice, when Piketty describes the dynamics behind whether the system is trending toward equality or inequality, he uses many terms that are not category errors; he is not describing economics, but describing wider society - labour power, World War Two, demographics, etc. Yet when he is describing the solution, he returns to the category error, and instead of offering prescriptions at the societal level, can only turn to traditional tools of economics, other emergent properties. Now, to be fair, emergent properties can and do feedback across scales, and the emergent properties Piketty targets - extreme wealth tax, for example - do hold the most potential for initiating corrective feedback. But like Mason says of Piketty’s conclusion of his solutions:

“He calls some of them "utopian" and he is right. It is easier to imagine capitalism collapsing than the elite consenting to them”.

The reason such corrective measures are utopian is because we do not have the enabling environment to implement them. The reason why we don’t have the enabling environment is because our cultural environment consists almost entirely of homogenised, corporate cultural identity, having held a monopoly over cultural production for generations, and unsurprisingly it can draw on decades of doctrinal intellectual endeavour to make an intelligent case for why we should not take all their money they stole and give it to the poor.

Why Piketty had the impact he did

Piketty has been able to do what he did, and have the impact that he has, is because he backed up his general, unquantifiable references to wider society with quantifiable data. Lots and lots of quantifiable data, in a language economists share. Yet, despite his empirical work relying solely on data regarding emerging properties - that is, his work incorporated only those things economics measures, thus removing the rest of the vast, systemic influences and different scales from his workings - he still managed to come out with the same conclusions as I, with my more fundamental workings. Why was this the case? Piketty has essentially identified the most meta, quantifiable indicator there is in the field of economics for understanding large-scale social dynamics.

Money has increasingly become distilled as the primary indicator for success. It is a natural by-product of the corporate profit motive, nay, inherent duty to profit above, instead of, everything else. The quest for money is a universal necessity for survival these days as it is an aspirational tool; everyone needs it. Everyone wants it. Traditionally, economics interpreted this, somewhat tragically given their power status, as everyone acting in rational self-interest, unaware or unconcerned that power had enforced this interpretation of self-interest upon the people in the first place. Further, economists couldn’t conceive of the accumulation of money being anything other than a natural desire in-and-of-itself, as opposed to the unwelcome necessity many (especially artists) people view it as. That’s a conservative way of putting it - anti-fiat money thought is making some significant cultural gains recently thanks to Libertarianism, but more on that later.

Whatever the underlying, individual, subjective views on money that may emerge and die, or come to dominate, one thing is certain. Money is the lifeblood of the majority of societies on this planet now. It more than anything else determines success, and it more than anything else segregates and forces the divergence of sub-cultural systems. Wealth and power have always gone hand-in-hand, back to the earliest days of civilisation, probably back to when wealth was measured by how many pretty shells the chiefs mate wore around her neck. The reason why the two are so closely correlated is because, up until now, it has always required wealth to create large-scale, sustained, challenging, cultural production. I say always; the times when this control over the production of cultural identity by wealth slipped were those times when cultural evolution sped out of the hands of those in power e.g. the arrival of the printing press and the Enlightenment, the use of written language by merchants travelling across cultural systems in the time of the Greeks.

Yet wealth will always bring enough power to bare on the market to stamp out intolerable upstarts eventually, it will always simply recourse to whichever official legal and political powers wealth happens to control and influence, and bring money’s influence to bear to outstrip anything an individual could hope to achieve. Besides, the costs involved throughout the 20th century to produce mass-culture competitively grew immense. What’s more, and it should go without saying, but wealth sticks to its own, and since wealth determines the exclusivity, or not, of one’s cultural identity, “its own” in times of high inequality is proportionately highly defined, and highly selective - another feedback loop. This dynamic of diverging-yet-homogenising cultural identities between those at the bottom and those at the top, under the perceived notion that the latter is meant to represent the former, is a dissonance time-bomb waiting to happen.

Piketty demolished neoliberalism myths at their weak spot, the point that indicates its methodology, the source of its power; wealth.

The inherent immorality of wealth inequality; ideal for a good indicator.

But back to the curve and my point about Piketty’s major category error. Piketty thinks that the fruits of economic maturity “can be offset by a more fundamental tendency towards inequality”. Well, he is right, only it is not an inherent tendency of capitalism, or even simply corporatism. It is way more fundamental than that; my identical curve instead showed the level of homogeneity of fundamental cultural identity, of which i predicted wealth inequality would be the best indicator two weeks before I heard of Piketty. This is what leads to growth inequality; divergent cultural identity between the powerful, and the powerless, leading to sub-conscious (and sometimes conscious) moral divergence.

Why does wealth accumulate according to a power law, not just in the West, but everywhere? The answer lies in here, in morality, or more specifically, the inherent exclusivity of morality that asymmetry of power creates. Inequality is about more than someone being paid more than you; allowed to persist, it can create cultural segregation, as the wealthy cluster behind security-manned gates, take different routes through airports, and generally live a life of shared culture exclusive to only a few. This cultural divergence leads to a moral divergence, as the wealthy interpret and express their morality in unavoidably relative terms that, and to the extent to, their own cultural environment, their peers, define. Such a cultural and moral divergence as this underpins all of the favouristism, nepotism, cronyism, elitism and corruption that makes the feedback loop, and wealth’s power-law distribution, possible.  

If society were fair and just, a true meritocracy, then wealth would be distributed as a bell-curve (you hear me Libertarians?). Here then is an example of something mentioned earlier, a cultural indicator that correlates with cultural identity.  The extent to which wealth is not distributed by a bell curve - the severity of the power law distribution - is the most direct, quantifiable indicator for the homogeneity of a systems fundamental cultural identity. Not only does the dominance of one ideology as cultural producer allow for the wealth inequality feedback (moral corruption) to occur, the extent of that dominance directly correlates with how far the rest of society will allow inequality to grow.

WEALTH INEQUALITY

increases                  increase

LIKELIHOOD FOR               CULTURAL AND

SYSTEMIC CORRUPTION           MORAL DIVERGENCE

increases

This feedback loop represents the fundamental basis for Piketty’s thesis, the explanation of wealth inequality trends. In truth, he might well agree with this idea - it doesn’t contradict his findings, quite the contrary. His analysis of wealth always outstripping earned income is correct, it is just that the degree to which it does is not determined by economics alone - it is not some quality inherent to capitalism, and neither is economics the universal theory of cultural evolution and beyond. Complexity is. This fundamental, exponential dynamic explains exponential wealth inequality, the moral divergence between power and its subjects, and the inevitability of power to corrupt, all at once - at all scales, across all identities and communities, fundamental or not, and throughout civilisation.

Piketty glimpsed this when he said that he could not see a way to turn the present tide of rising inequality. Mason again:

                  “But, says Piketty, a repeat of the Keynesian era is unlikely: labour is too weak, technological innovation too slow, the global power of capital too great. In addition, the legitimacy of this unequal system is high: because it has found ways to spread the wealth down to the managerial class in a way the early 19th century did not.”

This is Piketty recognising one of the fundamental traits across the emergence of each fundamental identity; that power dilutes just enough each time to release the tension, and grant greater freedom for complexity to continue to grow. Yet it is not just wealth that has been devolved to more people; that is but one, albeit highly ubiquitous, metric by which to measure a cultural systems homogeneity at a specific moment. There are many inherently unquantifiable metrics that comprise the whole system - the entire subjective realm - that are required to understand the dynamics of a cultural system, how it is likely to change over time. For this, homogenisation of ownership over mediums of mass-cultural production is the best measure to use, not wealth inequality. For this is the very backbone, the very definition of the extent and depth of the top-down cultural identity that allows for society to continue to allow inequality to grow, to continue to hold the lid on the pressure-cooker, until something blows.

This suggests the not-too-pleasant prospect that, unless the monopoly of corporate control over shared cultural production is broken and severely rowed back, culture and morality between power and subject will continue to diverge in the West, inequality will continue to grow exponentially, and then snap. When it finally arrives, will almost certainly be violent. Please feel free to counter that power laws are natural, but in doing so be aware that you are claiming we have no free will whatsoever, that we are mere slaves to natural, instinctive forces. We are not. We have cultural evolution. We can use it to correct this indicator of ideological corruption if society chooses it.

Just what in the hell is multiculturalism anyway?

Psst.. there is a TL;DR at the bottom, if you are that sort of person.

This blog documents one of those moments where something, some issue you have always considered right, suddenly flips around on you, and you cannot un-see what you have seen.

My view of multiculturalism, from a UK perspective, up until about 4pm Bangalore time last Sunday:

"Multiculturalism is a great thing. A diversity of culture is as close to an objective measure as I know to measuring the healthiness of a societal system, that is, the rate, breadth, and sustenance of cultural evolution. I mean, look at any point of History.. could you imagine a time when so many people, of so many races, could live side-by-side for generations without major trouble? This may be anecdotal, but I was 27 before I first heard a racial slur used in anger, and that was in Serbia. That just wouldn't have been conceivable before. Multiculturalism, as demonstrated in the UK, is a continuing force for good, for overcoming prejudices, and for enlivening traditional British culture with a whole fusion of influences."

OK, now I'm not saying I have thrown all of this out the window. It has been a positive force in reducing racism, it has led to a cultural renaissance in cooking, music, fashion, etc, and it has, for the most part, worked. But there's a hitch. I now feel I have to add punctuation. 'Multiculturalism' in the UK isn't quite what it says on the tin, as we can see by looking at what it means when people say that multiculturalism has been a success or failure. Additionally, it also highlights why I now view 'multiculturalism' as at best irrelevant, at worst a potentially dangerous turn of events.

N.b From now, I will use 'multiculturalism' to denote my prior understanding, at that of the majority of people in the UK, of the term. I will use 'multi-culturalism' to denote what I now regard as the correct definition, as I will explain below.

When people point to successful multiculturalism, inherent in the concept is that of successful integration. Sure, we benefit from the influences and fusions of other cultures, but it is presupposed that integration should be the aim. Conversely, multiculturalism is seen to have failed when integration does not occur, as when cultures congregate into what become segregated areas, targets of mistrust and suspicion because of their 'otherness'. We thus see that 'multiculturalism' is a misnomer, or at least a slightly Orwellian-sounding word by matter of circumstance. For it is the inputs of the system only that are actually multi-cultural; it is through the process of multiculuralism, aka integration, that the intended output is in fact cultural homogeneity. Synthesis of cultural influences does not create plurality in-and-of-itself, indeed it creates homogeneity when forced through power's cultural filter that is multiculturalism. Rather than a new paradigm of social living, what multiculturalism in fact represents is the successful effort of integration of races and ethnicities into a significantly enough sized culturally-homogenous mass to maintain passive control.

These is no mean feat in itself, and relative to what preceded capitalism (for this is the paradigm under which this process is made viable) it was, and still would be seen to be in some places, a force for moral good. But as with every social paradigm, there comes a time when it is no longer adequate, no longer legitimate to a civil sphere that by definition evolves quicker than institutionalised power. Now is that time. What started as a noble experiment, multiculturalism has become an all-too-successful strategy for GovCorp to mitigate counter-cultural threats through the dictation of a new cultural/social environment that is homogenised, atomised, and thus increasingly vulnerable to the use of fear and misrepresentations of genuine multi-culturalism; the 'other'. It is a pattern repeated throughout history: culture's homogenise, the mass shared identity is then abused by those wielding the monopoly on cultural production, and the populace is blindly steered into horrendous acts, all facilitated by the shared moral limits brought to them by their shared, morally-exclusive propaganda.

This is a dangerous path, regardless of any success that may have accrued regarding racism. We need to realise that the colour of your skin means sweet FA as an indicator of multi-culturalism, especially once you get beyond second-generation immigrants. Multi-culturalism is about what is inside your mind; your identity, your moral sphere, your subjective beliefs and values. It doesn't matter anymore whether you are white or black; if you all read the Sun everyday and nothing else, you are both equally likely to be fucking idiots in a distinctly British way. Awesome. Multiculturalism should not be considered as it is in terms of the variety of skin-colour visible in the same shops and bars and T-shirts; it should be measured by the presence of multiple cultures. The clue is in the name.

This realisation came so starkly when I noticed that, despite seeming to be the only white male within a two-mile radius of our neighbourhood here in Bangalore, and (perhaps slightly to my ignorant western eye) a highly homogenous ethinc mix, what I was seeing was nevertheless actual multi-culturalism. This contradiction with my previous notion of multicultural as meaning multi-ethnic hit me hard. Yet here, my day-to-day life consists of a myriad human interactions with informal workers in multiple sectors, a constant presence of a wide variety of architecture and trade (not the identikit houses and high streets we have in the UK), different songs, traditions, festivals, religions, and civic organisations, all highly visible and evident to everyone in a shared, multi-cultural environment.

You cannot segregate cultures here in India like you can in the UK. Would the rich have to view disfigured child beggars on Oxford street? Would cows be tolerated in choosing to to sleep on busy roads? Would the rights of the poorest include a policy environment recognising and facilitating the highly informal economic sector? While you may cry "What about convenience, safety, what about the children?!', at what cost have we sanitised and, to use a corporate word, rationalised, western society? It is now possible to do all of your shopping in one place, and not even talk to a cashier; hell, you can do it all from home and not give the delivery guy a second-look.  The west has regulated its way into mass social segregation and the loss of public-space grassroots expression, has allowed its populace to become products, and has allowed the social contract to be re-determined according to neoliberal macroeconomic mythological doctrine "our" representatives are now slaves to.

I once saw the UK as a beacon for multi-culturalism. Now I realise it is the exact opposite: a prime example of how culturally homogenous power can indoctrinate, sorry, integrate (and maintain, though for how long who can say) multiple cultures under one, overarching ideological doctrine that actually acts against their own interests, all within a generation.

This is the fundamental difference that makes India actually multi-cultural, and the UK merely multicultural. In India, (and I am not endorsing this, merely pointing out its relevance from a systems perspective) there is a caste system, a scale of inequality, and a variety of deep-rooted, mythological beliefs that keeps cultural identities numerous, distinct, and robust, yet all the while sharing the same physical space and thus making dissonance impossible to avoid. India has multiple loci of shared cultural identity: religion, state, civic, and commerce, that are all incredibly visible and that all have at least some influence on decision- and policy-making. It makes for a hodge-podge of cultural and community expression practised side-by-side, impossible to homogenise yet able to integrate up to a point.

This is key; this is multi-culturalism. No one has convincingly argued (and to my mind, could not..) that full cultural integration of outside cultures is a necessary or intrinsic good in a globalising world; in fact, attempts to do so have often coincided with mass genocide. There are people all over the world right now who share enough culture to create and maintain new communities, despite growing-up in radically different cultural climates. No one cultural identity can any longer morally claim authority to define the terms of what constitutes 'inclusion', or an 'official' national culture, or the 'other'. We learnt that already regarding religion in the West some time ago, with varying degrees of success, but the same holds true for political and economic ideologies also; all are trying to claim this authority by virtue of the impossible: the supposed ability to understand, predict, and control society, a complex adaptive system.

Incidentally, I do not use the reference to genocide glibly by the way. Cultural homogeneity is in my opinion the single worst target to aim for (unless you are on an isolated island). Particularly today, in this globalised, interconnected world, cultural homogeneity within the present paradigmatic confines of the nation state will only lead to fascism without a radical redefinition of the social contract, so as to remove its inherent nationalistic duty, and extend domestically held rights, our cultural production, and thus our moral sphere, to all humans and the environment.

This is particularly true of the West, where the sidelining or subversion of religion by the state and capitalism respectively, the vulnerable dependence on state spending of civic organisations (being cut as we speak), and the gradual and all-but-complete corporate subsuming of governmental and even fourth-sector stakeholders' individual and institutional frameworks, have all left the cultural landscape utterly monopolised by corporate culture. CEOs and politicians now speak the same, dress the same, go to the same places, swap jobs; the Venn-diagram of their cultural systems, and therefore their moral values and doctrinal priorities and sense of duty, are aligning, as competition between the two once opposing and balancing ideological identities declines. For all its benefits, for all the ska and the curries, multiculturalism has not been of any use in countering this homogenisation of culture, and the corporate power that lies behind it.

Herein lies the secret of the UK's multicultural 'success'. The monopolisation of cultural production (mass-media corporate conglomerates, regulatory frameworks creating market barriers, the fencing off of the internet into a few, widely-used, exploitative and closed applications) afforded by neoliberalism has created such a homogenised mass-culture that it doesn't matter what colour someones skin is, all consume a cultural diet utterly dominated by corporate propaganda that is increasingly being paid for via your attention, your data, and your time (that most valuable commodity). And by all, I mean all. Welfare systems and the exploitation of cheap labour and unethical mining operations abroad have made communication technologies ubiquitous even amongst the lowest levels of the socioeconomic ladder in the UK (as rich Tories keep reminding us, scornfully). The result is a homogeneous culture, a homogeneous populace, and the creation of enabling conditions for simple, easy mass manipulation.

For Christ's sake, we now live in a society where people are locked up for causing offense in a tweet, where our intelligence agencies are making the Stazi look antiquated, where our entire governance model is directed toward patently false macroeconomic ideals that benefit only a few, screws everyone else, and oh, by the way, might kill billions as it drives the complete transformation of our planets climate. So why, in such a 'multicultural' society of educated people, are we debating the apparent abject apathy of the entire fucking UK? Well, we aren't even doing that: not even when it briefly popped into the news cycle earlier this year thanks to Russell Brand, everyone was too busy applying simplistic, vacuous, un-insightful misrepresentations of a lone comedians passionate cry for change. But, why?

PR, spin, marketing... it all used to be called the same thing up until the early 20th Century: propaganda. The name was changed, because, well, they were marketers and they know that 'propaganda' sounded bad.. for some reason or other. 'Propaganda' was even the title of the first seminal text on the new art of marketing. One of the early drivers of marketing in the United States was efforts to find ways to claw back the money the rich now had to pay their slaves. And it is becoming a science, probing behavioural psychology and the cutting edge of social science research to find ever more subtle, effective ways to, let's call it what it is, undermine what free-will we may possess. Furthermore, the more homogeneous the culture, the identities of the populace, the more people there are to mass-target and successfully infect with mediocre, focus-group derived psycho-ops.

"You're fat. People are judging you. You need this to be a good parent. What would the neighbours think? This product will solve that problem we just made you realise you had. Climate change? Here, why don't you buy some tanning UVF50 spray, and we will kindly donate a penny to some scam of a carbon-reduction scheme some corporate lobby group conceived of...". Beautiful people, plastered 8ft high, stare down at you from either side as you enter the secular cathedral that is the corporate shopping mall, niggling at your insecurities, creating whole new ones, all just to get your money. No doubt all the adverts will feature the same mix of ethnicity, perhaps a disabled person, proudly displaying just how wonderfully inclusive and tolerant this corporate paradigm of mind-crushing mass wage-slavery really is.

Here's the rub: if there were something in our genes that made us inherently different when it comes to consuming, evaluating, and internalising culture, then 'multiculturalism' might be a) a useful indicator [of] b) something to strive for. But there isn't. The vast majority of us, regardless of skin colour, are still ideological victims, still subject to the same group-dynamics, pattern-recognition instincts, social-hierarchy insecurities, relative thinking, positive bias and the like that humans have contended with for millennia. Multiculturalism is a sham, a distraction, a mode of thinking stuck squarely in the 20th Century. Multi-culturalism on the other hand is a whole different kettle of fish; messier, more chaotic, a better enabling environment for cultural evolution, a system of checks-and-balances against the monopolisation of power by any one identity, and, on an anecdotal level at least for me, far more amenable to a healthy mind than the rigid, rule-laden, homogenous, boring, calcifying, increasingly immoral, cotton-wool wrapped worker battery farm that is the West.

All that is required is that people give up on this idea that someone over there, out of sight, perhaps even hundreds of miles away, should be forced to submit to the exact same kind of cultural prison they are. It really isn't hard. Just want for people to be free.

TL;DR Multiculturalism should not be about race or ethnicity. It is an Orwellian misnomer that actually means 'cultural homogenisation'. What was once a force for good has turned into a tool of power that is no longer moral (at least in the west). Contrast with India, where I'm the only white guy in my neighbourhood and yet I am experiencing real multi-culturalism to an insane degree - and loving it.

First impressions of India.

I have been here in Bengaluru (though it took a few goes before I got out of the habit of saying Bangalore) for just over a week now. Obviously it's been a bit of a hectic time making the move from England, and now that I've got a moments peace as littlun sleeps I figured I'd write up my initial impressions. To begin with i'll include particulars for the benefit of friends and family, but after that I wanted to just put to words some of the more deeper impressions that have already laid themselves upon me.

The area in which we are to live is called Jayanagar, and it is about 8kms or so south from the centre of Bengaluru (not the 22km a certain tuc-tuc driver tried to convince me it was). It seems a really nice, pleasant neighbourhood to live, though like almost all of Bengaluru there is building going on. Lots of building going on. Everywhere you look, entire families are apparently living on site, building from dawn till dusk - kids and grandparents alike carrying breeze blocks or mixing cement (incidentally, building regulations have presented themselves as a surprising area for philosophical inquiry, but more on that in a later blog). Within walking distance, but around 25p for a tuc-tuc if it's hot, is a large shopping mall that sells about 10'000 kinds of jeans but no children's underwear, and opposite is a more budget version with a small supermarket. In between that and the area we are staying is a really large, well equipped kids park, complete with an old, tired looking security guard.

Noise is a major factor here. No more than two seconds go by without the honk of a vehicle's horn; the horn seems to be used for every reason (and none, for what I can ascertain) but primarily replaces the functions of whatever road laws are routinely ignored. It is in no useful way correlated with anger, which is only displayed in cases of extreme stupidity. Surprisingly, it works. It reminds me of a rolling game of Tetris where vehicles will simply slot into whatever available space presents itself. The most I have seen abreast each other so far is seven across a two lane road (at least I assume it was meant to be two lanes - actual lines are reserved for near the centre of Bengaluru, though they also may as well be absent). The freedom gifted by the lack of adherence to rules (I assume they do exist) actually means that traffic behaves as a complex system, each unit working to the simple rules of a) point in the direction you want to go, and b) keep at least 2cms from any other vehicle. It makes for an exhilarating ride, as well as a beautiful example of self-organisation, which nevertheless still seems relatively safe since you rarely go above 30mph. Before I wrote this, I did look up the figures and yes, India IS the vehicle accident capital of the world. But, as I suspected, the vast majority of serious consequences fall on pedestrians and so, given their open and comfortable (and plentiful) convenience, tuc-tucs are the way to go here. Besides, it's just too much fun watching the drivers face fall upon hearing that I live here, having offered me a vastly inflated price (happens at least 30% of the time, to me anyway). Besides the obvious noise like construction and traffic, the stand-out winner of surprise so far has been the squirrels. Yes, the squirrels, that manage to outmatch every other bird around with their incessant... well, it can only be called chirping. I refused to belief it at first, my mind preffering to think that that squirrel was simply miming. But no, they really are noisy buggers, the result I presume of an evolutionary effort to communicate above the human-induced cacophony.

The apartment we are due to move into in the coming week ticks every box we wanted - security, ceiling fans, balcony - and looked every bit the abandoned 1970's western apartment I'd seen on rental websites. Strip lighting can work well, stick scarves over them and you can effectively repaint your room in an instant, and after lengthy negotiation between me, Guru (the co-director of the NGO that Angela now works for), and the apartments' owner, we agreed to commit, upon the place being cleaned, new bathroom unit installed, a working window in the toilet, and one window of each room having mosquito mesh placed across. One of Angela's co-workers, and the parents of Guru, both live in the same block of apartments, which also includes some swings within its gated walls. Will need a fridge stat; we are currently buying a small bag of milk each morning and evening since we don't have one in this top-floor apartment above Guru and Anita's house (Anita also being a co-founder of the NGO). Where we are now opens out onto a huge top-floor covered terrace, from where I write this now (pictures soon family and friends, honest!)

Yet despite the noise, the midday heat (gonna get much worse come april), the constant attempts at conning me (actually, I quite like this game..), the dust, the sight of toddlers navigating building sites, the numerous, though very submissive, stray dogs... I bloody love this place. People smile at you. People talk to you. Yes, I know that I am experiencing something very different from the norm, especially when I have Sen-might-as-well-be-a-movie-star-Anna with me, but I also see it all around me. Community. Mutual-aid. People actually *talking* to one another, to strangers; it is an utterly necessary and indispensable function in an environment that is so heavily infused by the informal economy (the definition of which will also be subject to a future blog). The tuc-tuc drivers have been the most visible and accessible example of sub-community I've encountered, since they are simply indispensable for getting around. The drivers clearly do not have 'the knowledge' of London taxi-drivers; instead, the flow of traffic and the openness of the vehicle allows for them to share information and get directions - something I have yet to see another tuc-tuc driver deny. You also never see just one driver at the side of the road, trying to fix his (yes, all male) tuc-tuc, the average being I would guess 3-4.

But all of this observation and interaction pales into insignificance when compared to what India has taught me most about so far. England. I wouldn't deign to suggest I have deep insights about India; that would take years. But England, and by extension much of Western culture? Mind blown. Already. I knew, deep-down... actually, no. Scratch-that. It wasn't so much 'deep-down' as a very-much-conscious and rationally-derived conclusion of mine that my complexity-based beliefs would feel more at home here. I just hadn't conceived that it would feel so damned immediate and comprehensive. Having removed myself from the environment that has kept me in an ever-increasing state of dissonance, I suddenly see so clearly the absolute folly of the West, but from a deeply personal perspective. In attempting to regulate and control every facet of life on the precept of safety, the West is driving its citizens mad. We are complex beings. The societies we create are both emergent properties of that complexity, and complex systems in-and-of themselves. By creating and enforcing literally thousands of laws that constrain individual autonomy, *and populations conditioned to obey them*, the West is trying to create an ever-more homogenous society *and* self out of beings that cannot and should not function like that. Every man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains; this has never been so true (excepting valid feminist contentions at the wording) in such a subtle and all-consuming way as it is today in the West. Of course, I would not be so naive as to think India is 'more free' than the UK in the 'official' sense; governance here is no doubt worse than the West. But civil society *knows it*. Here, there is a clear cultural divide between the bottom and the top. The word corruption is everywhere. By comparison, the citizens of the West are submissive slaves to the influence of top-down cultural production, all-too-ready to advocate for or ignore the world-destroying externalities that come with the West's incessant (manufacturing of the) craving for cleanliness, convenience, and perfection.

Well, Sen's up now, so I'll wrap up. Bengaluru is awesome, we're gonna love it here, and the West is conducting a startling and unprecedented experiment in 'self'-organisation that to me resembles nothing more than a conceptual battery-farm demanding nothing less than the future of the world in order to keep collecting the eggs. Minds be damned.

More soon. Watch this space...

Philippines response: We can do so much better than this.

So its been, what, a week now since the strongest storm ever recorded to hit land smashed into the Philippines? Yet the news is full of stories of communities and areas still utterly unreached by anyone. With so much devastation, a near complete lack of shelter and food has been joined in this time with infection of wounds, disease-ridden water, bloated, stinking bodies lining the streets. This is surely one of the closest approximations on the planet of hell on earth right now. It is also largely man-made.

I'm not talking about climate change, though the evidence is certainly there to at least forward the argument. No, I'm talking about the gap between what is theoretically possible to achieve regarding disaster relief, and what we are witnessing a repeat of now; the shambling, complicated, delayed mess of confused good intentions that traditionally follows such large-scale catastrophes.  That which is theoretically possible is a crucial and necessary component of judging actions. For example, if it were possible that someone could have saved a life, they would feel, and possibly be held, more responsible than if there were no chance to save it at all. Examining what is theoretically possible also helps to gauge to what extent a situation is entirely down to natures ferocity (with no realistic fault on us), and to what extent our own ineptitude is responsible.

In my considerable reading on the climate and development field, I have got a pretty good idea on where we are at regarding climate change adaptation. There are a lot of great ideas out there; the rate of innovation in the field is considerable, but constrained in realising anything like the kind of change required to help countries like the Philippines withstand the prospect of many more such storms to come.  The scale of the problem simply out-dwarfs the scale of the development and climate regimes within the wider system in which they operate. Whilst development continues to play second-fiddle, or even fiddley-fucking-dee, to the power and growth of the sectors actually in charge - oil, finance, banking, defense contractors - at both state and multi-national levels, we do not stand a chance in hell of making the necessary transition to avoid significant warming. Neither will we stand a chance in hell of getting anywhere near enough resources or political will to adequately adapt to that warming, raising the prospect of many more instance of watching a weeks worth of news stories covering a gradual descent into something that brings Dante to mind.

It does not have to be like this. Let me paint a picture of what could be theoretically possible right now, if states could act cooperatively in mutual, long-term governance for the good of their people. Since this is theoretical, I am going to assume that the worlds resources are my oyster, and that they could be used in such a way that takes into account only those limitations implied directly from the resource itself. I consider none of these outrageous. We put a fucking man on the moon for crying out loud.

Meteorology is sufficiently advanced to give a few days warning of such storms. This is a pretty decent window for preparation, so long as the preparation itself is sufficiently prepared for. It is possible to have climate-proof silos every ten miles of at-risk coastline and flood plain, that are stocked from permanent stockpiles of medicine, food, shelters, stoves etc upon notification of an incoming storm. The thing's storm-proof. Stick a team of engineers, medics, and police in there to ride it out. Have flares, a fog-horn, and a search-light ready to bring people in from miles around. Furthermore, storm-proof bunkers should house teams of engineers at at-risk airports, with runways and their obstructive paraphernalia cleared in advance.

Fleets of solar-powered unmanned drones, with a few bases positioned throughout at-risk regions, could have the entire affected area mapped, assessed, and prioritised within 24 hours, using a mix of visual-recognition algorithms and real-time human assessment over live-feeds. This data would then be made public, for all the aid agencies to work from. It would then make sense, since the data is the same for all, to use this as the basis for an open-source project that enables all aid agencies to coordinate on the same platform. Requirements for each area would already have been provisionally assessed, so it would be relatively simple to allocate larger areas to agencies with more capacity, or specific areas requiring the specific skills of other agencies.  All of this could be accomplished within a further 24 hours in my opinion. Meanwhile, with the airport hopefully secure, planes working on predetermined plans should already be en-route from neighbouring countries.

In terms of technology, I have already mentioned drones, but think what might have been available to us right now if governments and arms companies were funding and researching ways to help and save people, rather than kill them. What about a plane that lands on the sea by an affected coastline, gets onto the land at the nearest opportunity, and automatically reconfigures itself into a stocked health clinic? What about small automated drones that can locate trapped survivors and deliver water to them, sending their location to the nearest help and the central coordinating platform? What about fully automated pick-up and supply parachute drops using fleets of drones from a base at the airport where aid is flying into?

All of this is possible. Theoretically. What stands in its way is the combined effect of thousands of years of what we may now consider bullshit; separatism. I'm not talking about rebel groups. I'm talking about states, corporations, militaries, religions.. all the things that separate us as a species. The global outpouring of empathy and sadness after events such as this is testament to fact that there is far more that unites us than divides us, it's simply that we don't often get to see and realise that in the manufactured cultures in which we reside. Culture, resources, wealth, myths, identity; all are dominated by entities whose cultures prohibit the kind of cooperation, long-term thinking, and shift away from militarism that are necessary to make this vision a reality.

The factors that create this gap between what is theoretically possible and what is actually happening stem from much wider areas than simply within the development field. The fault lies in our entire political and economic system. It is ideological, yet it is the system in which the development and climate regimes find themselves. On the one hand, the largest ever peer-review process the world has ever seen has concluded that we are in trouble. On the other, politicians and CEOs continue to undermine what political will arises, extract ever-more quantities of fossil fuels, and cooperate in effectively bringing us to ruin. When it comes to the crunch, which way will the cookie crumble? Will the development regime have enough independence to effectively revolt? To be sure, the early adoption of complexity theory in the development field, particularly with regard to climate, throws something of a spanner in the works. Of all governing regimes, this area seems to be innovating and evolving quickest - certainly considerably faster than the cultures that grant their resources and further contribute to climate change. A choice may have to be made soon. The emotive speech by the head delegate from the Philippines recently at COP in support of direct action is only the start. Will the western development field stand with their southern counterparts in demanding the kind of wholescale reform that is really necessary, and stop with all the hot air?

Yet this need not be a conflict (though the possibility is certainly there, especially if cultures continues to separate through inequality). There is an urgent need for the kind of informatic, logistical, engineering, rapid response skills of the military and security services. There are, handily, already military bases all over the place that can the converted to development and disaster response use. There are also huge great fucking military budgets that could be put to far more constructive use. It would even be worth a shot in terms of satisfying current military and security objectives. You want to make people want to bomb you less? You don't wanna lose the feeling of being all manly and special? Try being more International Rescue than Team America. That said, the last thing I am suggesting is that we kit out a load of U.S. bases with solar-powered drones. I wouldn't give a handgun to a baby, and I wouldn't do that. All of this is predicated on an equitable, transparent, and inclusive international body headed by the development field, not generals. They are the ones innovating. They are the ones without a culture formed primarily around male violence. They have far more hope of coordinating, monitoring, and progressing such strategies, but only with the help of a political economic system that has corrected it's destructive short-termism and divisive dynamics. The private sector has to be onboard at some point - when may determine whether this thing goes to a fight.

A question for Michael Shermer.

I have kept this short and simple so that the main argument doesn't get overlooked again. It is in response to Michael Shermer's piece in the Huffington Post and I couldn't resist posing him this question.

While I agree with much of what Michael says, there are still some glaring inconsistencies with regard to what is defined as a "value", and why. I do not understand it. Since many skeptics are self-described Libertarians, I'd like to put forward this argument as to why such a label is inconsistent with skepticism, even by scientific skepticism's own criteria...

Society is a complex system. Political ideology is an attempt at predicting said complex system. Science has repeatedly shown, through testing, that it is impossible to predict complex systems over enough time. Further, the amount of time is determined by the extent and accuracy of the data describing both the initial state of the system and the dynamics involved.

Using climate models as an example, I am sure Michael would agree that masses of research and refinements of algorithms have been necessary to get us to this point where models may starting to be considered potentially accurate. I'm not totally sure on that point, or to what extent. But that is irrelevant, because...

Established political ideologies, including Libertarianism, seek to predict a complex system using concepts that pre-date the very existence of the fields of study necessary to even create a model!

It is like claiming climate scientists can make climate predictions without reference to meteorology!

As Michael reminds us, extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence - a staple mantra ignored when skeptics openly identify with a political label. Sure, you may add disclaimers, claim that your belief is not dogmatic, but why then identify with an -ism at all? Why reinforce the legitimacy of ideology as an imposed construct? You might say that belief need not require positive proof, but when the probability of being right is so incredibly low how can a skeptic possibly hold enough ideological conviction that they would be willing to gamble with people's lives? You might say that ideology is all we have to work with politically, but isn't that partly down to ideology being anathema to constructive discourse? It's up to us to break that cycle.

It's not just that complex systems are impossible to predict with such basic tools, its that those almost certainly false predictions are then imposed on non-believers in a manner our ancestors fought so hard to rid with religion.

A skeptic should identify politically simply as 'skeptic', learn the words, "we can't know yet" and "we need more data" and "it is immoral to impose that policy on non-believers in that way with the data you have..." and start some serious, post-ideological political discourse as a community.

Crisis of skepticism? Conversation between Grimeandreason and Daniel Loxton

The following is a storified twitter conversation (or the beginnings off... ;)) between me and Daniel Loxton on the remit of skepticism and the skeptic community...

(Thanks to Kylie Sturgess for compiling the first half from a week ago..)

Round 1: http://storify.com/kyliesturgess/discussion-on-twitter

Round 2: http://storify.com/Grimeandreason/dan-loxton?utm_source=embed_header

Note: in round 2, I have taken the time to adjust the order of the tweets slightly to reflect their 'reply' positions, if you get me. If it wasn't clear, I went back into twitter to check. I've let Dan know so that he can double-check. At a glance, it seems round 1 might be a straight time-dependent order, so it might be a little trickier to follow. Daniel enters stage about a dozen tweets in...


I will add more as/if it arrives. I hope you find this useful - it's a much better format for debate than blogging in my opinion.