Kwoll Burrow

Democracy for Export

2005-03-22T09:05:00.000+08:00

It has become popular in recent years for certain western Nations to promote democracy in areas of the world which have traditionally been ruled by despotic and authoritarian regimes. Democracy is promoted as a cure-all for a number of destabilizing influences, including support for terrorism. The democracy which is offered comes in only one flavour, which happens to be the style of democracy popular in the West for the last 100 or so years, a form of democracy emasculated by party political process and limiting representation to a preselected enclave, controlled by party apparatchiks on behalf of their respective vested interests.

There may be some benefits in the party political system as opposed to true democratic representation. The arbitrary division into parties places little burden of choice on the individual voter. Choice is limited to those candidates preselected by the party apparatus, ignoring the potential and capacity of the majority of citizens for the role of representative. Vested interests do not have to squander their largess randomly in order to influence the processes of government. They can invest instead in a few well defined institutions, one of which they may be confident will gain a controlling vote in the parliament. It allows the fulfillment of promises made to vested interests prior to and during the expensive period of electioneering to be fulfilled, without the distraction of the parochial concerns of individual electorates. Because the party political candidate owes their allegiance to the party and not to the electorate, the party can make promises which the candidates are then obliged to fulfill, regardless of the needs or interests of their constituents.

Another benefit of the party system is that it provides a career path for professional representatives. Loyalty to the party can be rewarded by nomination to more secure seats. A career politician thinks beyond the needs of their electorate to consider continuity of office as a priorty, and gives their allegiance to the party machine which offers the best protection against being voted out of office. More secure seats offer the prospect of significant increases in remuneration and retirement benefits. Evidence of continuity in party control of electorates also helps campaign managers direct limited resources into particular seats considered marginal by party apparatchiks, and where candidates may require propping up on the hustings.

Curiously, the ideal number of parties is seen as two; one more than totalitarianism, and enough to be called democracy, without risking instability of government which is the ever present danger should representatives have the temerity to express their own views on issues and to vote according to their conscience. The result is not a parliament of the people, but government by committee, with the parliament led by its nose to invariably pre-determined decisions, while entertaining the masses with expensive and futile theatrics of “debate”. Instead of a powerful meld of minds, with each elected representative sincerely applying their full faculties to each issue on behalf of their electors, an impoverished committee of power brokers determines the outcome of debates before they are heard.

The potential of true consultation for distilling insightful solutions to challenging issues is lost in favour of political expediency, and the assurance of funding for the next election campaign. How is it that a creature capable of escaping the gravitational bonds of earth and soaring to the moon cannot in this day conceive of a more suitable form of representation, when the present system requires voters to squander what franchise they have on a tainted and inherently corrupt system? And by whose authority does the West claim a right to subject the East to conversion by the sword, to this absurd and outdated system of government?

The Beauty of Parables

2005-03-08T11:22:00.000+08:00

Perhaps because I became familiar with parables at Sunday School, I have in the past tended to think of parables as a simplistic and patronizing form of teaching, but having shaken off the things of childhood, I have changed my view. It now appears to me that the parable is an ideal tool for the teacher when their students are not simply one grade, but generations, and not only generations but centuries of students.

The parable, because it finds its illustrations from human experience, speaks across centuries with the same relevance today as when it was first spoken. Jesus, for example was not speaking only to his disciples, or a few shepherds on the hill. He was speaking also to Mohammed’s contemporaries, and with such relevance that Mohammed found no need to abrogate any principle they illuminated. Instead He was able to refer His followers to the Bible for those homilies, and occupy Himself with the particular needs of His time.

In confessing my childish understanding of parables, I do not mean to denigrate Sunday School. On the contrary, and despite the fact that imperfect teachers were seeking to inculcate the wisdom of a Perfect Teacher into imperfect children, nevertheless they managed to impart an essence of the role religion should have in the functioning society. It was the parable that allowed me to recognize this despite my tender years. But this understanding was tempered by the equal realization that those same adults who considered Sunday School valuable to children, had themselves forgotten or had chosen to ignore the principles they still thought were necessary for children in the community to learn.

They, it seemed, were too caught up in the humdrum of a material world in which they had to earn a living and survive. In the face of these exigencies, the big picture of the parable soon narrowed into various forms of selfishness. It went from the selfishness of states, with their claims of sovereignty and nationalism, to the selfishness of races with their prejudices and ideas of supremacy, to the selfishness of vested interests with their political parties restraining democracy, to the selfishness of families with their arranged marriages, to the selfishness of individuals in their willingness to compete, to cheat, and to lie.

Such was the contradiction between the deed and the word that in a child’s eyes it came to appear that the principles and morals exemplified in the parable were for children only, and their necessity was outgrown by adults, who found new rules to follow, more suited to their adult world , but which could not be ascribed to any known scripture or revealed Word. Nevertheless, we children noticed that adults followed these alternative rules religiously in their habits, rituals and promptings, and at the expense of worship in Church. While they sent us to Sunday School, they preferred to polish the pews at the Pub or the race track.

The circumstances of my life eventually drew me back to the Scriptures and the parables they contain, and I found I could read them with renewed respect and insight, despite the injuries suffered on my road to Damascus. Now I have opportunity to reflect on the dichotomy I observed as a child, and find it an accurate observation. Moreover, I can declare that it represents an enormous human tragedy when so many supposedly devout adult believers, of all the major religions, who for whatever reason, have failed to heed their Scripture and have chosen a text of their own devising, according to their own appetites and promptings.

Any student of religious texts cannot fail to be amazed at the consistency with which spiritual principles are enunciated and affirmed in the Scriptures of all the major Religions, and regardless of whether their particular declared adherents are seeking each others blood. In regard to spiritual principle, the unknowable essence of God, the necessity for an intermediary between God and man, they are in complete agreement. It soon becomes apparent also that all the religious strife and conflict which may presently be observed and which had blighted human history for centuries has no true basis in Scripture, and represents a complete denial by those zealots who claim license for their brutality from any Revealed Text.

The consequence has been to bring religion into disrepute as a means to social order and harmony, and has prompted a fruitless search for alternative materialist ideologies which might provide a surrogate for Divine guidance. None have proved efficacious, and on the contrary, have themselves become the excuse for atrocious crimes and injustices against countless innocents. And the pattern continues into this 21st Century unabated. As one ideology loses ground, another gains sway, but since all are grounded in material and humanist ideology, and none acknowledge either the existence of God or the essential spiritual nature of humanity, they fail to solve the social ills they claim to understand, nor to satisfy the hunger of the masses for meaning, for truth and above all, for justice.

Perhaps it is time to put aside adult pride, to put aside our investment in various religious establishments, dogmas, ideologies, traditions, all the accretions which might stand between us and the true meaning contained within parables and all revealed Scriptures and look at them again with eyes innocent of any prejudice or presumption, and seek an answer to this question. Why are these Scriptures of the great Religious movements of the world in complete accord, while we, their supposed followers, are not?

Crusade against Nationalism

2004-07-19T23:21:00.000+08:00

Commentators have suggested that we are observing a return to the Crusades of the Middle Ages, but it is not clear what they mean by this. Do they mean that we have returned to a period of religious warfare between the forces of Christianity and the forces of Islam, or do they mean a period of warfare in the name of religion? If they simply mean warfare in the name of religion, I can agree with them, but if they imagine that any of the present conflicts in the world are genuine expressions of either Faith, then I am at odds with that view, since the conduct of the combatants is not consistent with the tenets of either religion.

If the fundamental purpose of religion is to unite mankind, then it provides no justification for dividing it into warring factions. It is true that Islam makes provision for war, but only for the purpose of protecting the Faith of Islam itself, which was a dire issue in the days of the Prophet but not today. The greatest threat to Islam today would seem to come from its own professed believers, not any particular political or ethnic group. Indeed throughout the world there is a growing respect for the principle of freedom of religion, so that everyone should be free to practice their Faith according to their own conscience and without hindrance or persecution. Despite the links drawn between terrorist activities and fundamentalist religious movements, the leaders of both religions are at pains to recognise terrorism as an aberation which has no relationship to the true Faith it purports to uphold. In such an environment of growing tolerance there is no rational basis for Jihad, any more than there is a rational basis for refusing to recognize the significant common ground between Islam and Christianity.

The turmoil which the world is presently experiencing will come to be seen as not so much a religious crusade as the death throes of Nationalism, giving way as it must to globalism. That the politicians busy with the present conflict have failed to recognize this is obvious from the absurd excuses they make for their present course of military action well outside their sovereign boarders, well outside the most generous interpretation of their national interests and without a clear mandate from the United Nations. On the one hand they use the argument of national sovereignty to justify the harsh treatment of asylum seekers, while on the other they show complete disregard for the sovereignty of another nation, on the grounds of corrupt government.

It can be rationalised however, if one views the world as a single federation and the United States as the self appointed Federal Police. But what sort of democracy would that illustrate besides one from which ninety five percent of the world is disenfranchised? Is this the sort of democracy we would like to see introduced to Iraq?

Distinguishing Literature

2004-07-16T06:56:00.000+08:00

In the late seventies a student of Literature, tasked with reading and responding to several examples of modern literature, concluded that read together as representatives of the modern novel, they offered a portent that the world was entering a new dark age. The student observed a progressive breakdown in the structure of plot, and a progressive preoccupation with the alienation of the individual ego in the face of an essentially meaningless and absurd human existence. There could be observed in the work of certain prominent authors a progressive abandonment of universal symbols in favour of introspective rumination and stream of consciousness, inviting the conclusion that the power of Literature to convey meaning through symbolism was itself under threat. The lecturer, on reading the essay, concluded that it had little to do with literature and more to do with psychology and refused to mark the paper. The student was given to understand that literature was a special class of text with special qualities which literary critics are trained to distinguish, and to which students of literature should aspire.

Now, a quarter of a century later, and with the dark age clearly upon us, I turn again to the question of value in literature, and what distinguishes one type of writing from another so that one deserves the title literature and the other, pulp fiction. I would argue that this ability to distinguish one from the other is more important now than it was then with the proliferation of all manner of text in all manner of forms.

I have read commentaries by western authors on both the Koran and the Bible, extolling these books as Literature, while ignoring and devaluing them as scripture. The curious difference is that the western mind seems to ignore the authorship of the Bible, while decrying the claims made by the author of the Koran. The Bible is seen as a compilation by many authors, while the Koran is clearly the work of one author. The claims that this book is a sister to the Bible and belongs to that special class of scriptural literature are ignored, and in the process, the significance of the text is lost, despite clear evidence of the religious movement it gave rise to and its worldwide scope.

But does the fact that a text can spawn a religion make it of itself Literature? The writings of L Ron Hubbard and Claude Vorilhon come to mind. Both were journalists, and both have spawned religious movements, but the body of their writings has yet to attract significant academic attention as Literature, and in libraries both texts would be more often found under the category science fiction than religion.

It would seem that these journalists, responding to the demands of their audience have sought to inject new meaning into old symbols by reinterpreting the religious and historical phenomenon of centuries to build a new egocentric and godless religious system thereby giving meaning back to people’s lives. Life only appears without purpose due to the misinformation provided by others, while these movements claim to have the true knowledge which has been withheld from us.

If there was a portent to be seen from studying the modern novel, then surely there is a portent in the proliferation of ego worship evidenced by these new godless religions. Regardless of whether their text is Literature or trash, the student of religion can today clearly observe that there are certain universals within all the major and successful religious movements. It can be assumed that these universal principles are essential to the nature of religion itself, and where these are missing from a purportedly religious system, they may rightly assume they are observing some phenomena other than a legitimate functioning religion. This is the new task of the student of literature in this age, to distinguish prophesy from pulp fiction, and to distinguish egotism and cults of personality from humble worship of a divine essence.

The Days of the Mammonites

2004-05-25T20:17:00.000+08:00

Let me admit at the outset that I do not have faith in the systems of economic theory relied upon by modern governments to determine their budgets and fiscal policies. I will not set my trust on any economic theory which cannot accommodate or explain altruism in its graphs and algorithyms, and I dismiss economic policies which do not place a value on untapped and untrammelled natural resources, including the air we breath.

My formal efforts to understand economics were not rewarding. The lecturer was highly regarded for having written a book about the economy of a mythical island Nation, which from the cartoon illustrations looked suspiciously like a banana republic. He began his lecture by drawing a graph with tractors on one axis and food on the other to show how opportunity must be divided between enterprises, with the choices affecting the output of both. Sure enough, when the line maxed out at 15 tractors a year, food production was zero as predicted. The fact that the example mixed luxury with necessity was ignored. Natural curiousity forced me to enquire how workers could be persuaded to work for a year without food, while making the maximum quota of tractors. I quickly discovered that such issues were of no concern to economic theorists.

The first challenge for any would be economic theory today is to be persuasive without provoking worship, as a dogma or a credo upon which the whole edifice of a society might be predicated. There is only one thing worse than a false theory of economics, and that is a false economic theory which attracts the religious zeal of its adherents and which is thereby allowed to determine the entire order of the social fabric. In a world hungry for personal gain, the “ismising” of economic theories can give rise to materialist movements which come to function as surrogate religions, as for example Communism and Capitalism. For all their sectarian squabbles in recent history, both are denominations of the same church and worship the same god, Mammon. The consequences of this idolatry have yet to do their worst in the world.

It has long been obvious to anyone entangled in litigation with Companies that they are devoid of any ethic beyond profit. This is the only responsibility their Articles of Incorporation place upon their directors. Any semblance of compassion in their mission statements can be dismissed as marketing hype, since they form no social contract. You cannot take a Company to Court and force it to do anything, unless there is a specific statute prohibiting the offending conduct. There is presently no onus on corporations to be good corporate citizens, only to make profits for their shareholders. For the affluent there is no dichotomy here, since they see themselves as the shareholders, and so it is all good. For them to sue a corporation on some ethical ground would be to bite the hand that feeds them.

The problems compound when corporations, as is increasingly the case, develop economic power beyond the gross national product of Nations, and in an essentially lawless international environment. Their lack of corporate ethic then extends beyond national borders to plunder the resources of their neighbour, or to hold their industries to ransom through the manipulation of the market. On this scale, the excesses of corporations have the potential to become catastrophic, and their consequences hideous in terms of human suffering. Yet individual Nations are no more able to stop the plundering of Corporations than unarmed sailors in a rowing boat were able to stop the predations of a Pirate Galleon. Without the promulgation of international laws to govern their activities, Corporations are free to move beyond the scope of sovereign Nations to control them.

Where once paper currency possessed a redeemable value, today it can be more perishable than an ox cart full of cabbages. The rampant devaluation of third world currencies floated on the international market brings both demeaning poverty to workers and an endless source of cheap labour to industry, which none may call slavery since according to the capitalist liturgy, it is a natural consequence of market forces. It is as if we have moved from nationalism to a transnational form of feudalism, and the sovereign Nations are merely the titular powers who exist solely through the grace of Pirate Corporations in their role as robber Barons. Ironically, the analogy is supported by the fact that many of today’s tax havens used by transnationals once provided safe anchorage to pirate fleets.

But against this gloomy background a warm light can be seen glimmering. While our corporate entities may be moving out of control, humanity is moving ever closer. The ignorance and misinformation of former times is progressively being erased by personal experience of other cultures, a defacto common language is allowing dialogue where once their was only suspicion. The global village is no longer the vision of the futurologist, it has become a reality. Sovereign Nations are now but suburbs of the same city. This trend is being recognised by governments in certain regions by the issue of common passports and currency, allowing the free movement of citizens throughout the region while preserving their National and cultural identity. What was once a culture of fear and suspicion is now slowly being supplanted by a culture of trust and cooperation.

Curiously, much of this cooperation is being fuelled by a resource which economists do not measure, and which does not feature in their prognostications. On the internet today there are countless evidences of genuine altruism, and the empowerment of individuals to use their initiative in contributing positively towards the evolution of an international community, well ahead of the ponderous moves of their respective governments, and despite the corrosive machinations of terrorists. While some might argue that no real lessons can be drawn from a virtual community, the challenges of complex consultation, communication and organization required to produce commercial grade software, demonstrate skills which easily translate into other social and economic endeavours which can be truly international in scope.

Consider how dismissive commentators were about that product of the Penguin, saying that, unlike David, it could never defeat the champion of corporate capitalist operating systems, Microsoft Windows. How hushed are those same voices now, and how emancipated are the masses who, despite the gainsayers,have put their faith in Linux as an industrial strength product? Current economic theories are not able to explain this evolutionary phenomenon? It defies all conventional economic and business logic and it exploits resources which do not even appear on the economists balance sheet.

Plowshares and Pruning Hooks

2004-05-24T10:26:00.000+08:00

I have often wondered whether history is a poor tutor, or we are simply poor students. There was the Great War which was declared to be the “war to end all wars” in its horror and its carnage, but we still enrolled for World War II. World War II taught us that the League of Nations was dead in the water and that we needed a new tribunal to avert conflict between Nations. So the United Nations was born to watch through the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Seven Day War and others too numerous to name. Until at the end of the Millennium it seemed that the United Nations had gone the same way as its predecessor, and had demonstrated for the last time its powerlessness to prevent international conflict. Strangled by bureaucratic protocols, heartrending appeals by the oppressed for rescue fell on deaf ears, and UN troops were forced time and again to watch as innocents were slaughtered around them.

It was perhaps naïve to hope that an instrument of self interest designed by the victors of the Second World War would ever bring lasting peace, but it did serve to prevent the members of that select club from tearing at each others throats during its time. But it could not address the progressive economic imbalances that continued to develop between differing materialist ideologies and groups of Nations, and the use of economic coercion in lieu of outright military force. It seemed powerless to redress the establishment of puppet governments to serve the National interests of powers who chose not to intervene directly in the affairs of other Nations.

How fortunate then that the cold war should end before the United Nations was finally proven ineffectual in administering justice and therefore incapable of establishing and maintaining lasting peace. It was capitalist materialism, represented most prominently by the United States of America, which won the day over collective materialism. Such is the current disparity in military and economic power that it seems there is no longer any risk of international conflict involving conventional military forces, except for ‘rogue’ Nations, since there are no combatants willing to take the field against patently overwhelming force.

But a problem remains. While the most powerful military force to ever exist is left alone in the field, a new and pernicious enemy to peace has emerged. Terrorism does not provide a suitable adversary to a conventional army since its practitioners do not require the trappings of an army and can remain invisible within civilian populations until they choose to strike. The risk of collateral damage limits conventional military activity directed to rooting them out. September 11 was not the greatest damage inflicted by terrorists upon America. The most telling blow has been their ability to make the entire US Military powerless and therefore largely redundant. The control of terrorism requires police action by civil authorities, acting in close co-operation with their international colleagues. It cannot be overcome using conventional military forces without exterminating the civilian population in which the terrorists are embedded.

“And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Micah 4:3)