unEmpire-like
I am reading one of the most important books I have read about the whole state of the world. The Nutmeg Curse by Amitav Ghosh. As Naomi Klein says about this book. Do not think you know what it is about.
In Critical Path, Buckminster Fuller discusses how we must draw the arrow of time far enough back to understand the possible future. He calls this prognostication. Fuller also discusses global shipping and supply routes as the pathways to power and hegemony. He speaks about energy. Oil. Who controls it? And the military.
Amitav Ghosh references all of these and more as he clearly establishes the whole system of issues that are creating climate change, mass migration, war, and poverty. All of the unjust issues our home Planet and its citizens face.
It is the unending quest for Empire, might and power that continues to destroy our world.
Or, as Amerindian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest described it, wetico. A sick tendency for white man to control, capture and rule everything from the land to all its creatures, believing their whiteness makes them superior to anyone with different skin.
Empire precedes capitalism. Empire and capitalism were built off colonisation, slavery and genocide. Empire required terraforming the land into something other than its natural way of being, in the process wiping out whole species, including the human inhabitants. It was these things that enabled capitalism to flourish.
Until we understand the interconnected web of all of these elements – the desire for Empire, for hegemony, to control the oil, the shipping lanes, to build a military-industrial complex that protects the power of energy and shipping, where people of colour or a lower caste are considered expendable, we will be helpless in our attempt to create a more equitable, and at minimum, sustainable world.
These issues are hard to face, particularly for those of us, like me, who have been raised off the spoils of these systems. Sure, I can do everything in my power to reduce my carbon footprint. But am I willing to relinquish the privilege provided to me by the nature of my birth into a semi-powerful state?
These are the questions we must ask.
Americans, are you willing to no longer be the hegemon if you want to create a world with a future for Earth and all her creatures?
Do we even need a hegemonic state?
Or, as Fuller said, we have one Spaceship Earth with about 192 captains.
There is no doubt that the geopolitical order of things will change. Fossils are a limited resource. Is it possible to shift humanity to a different way of being that is decidedly unEmpire-like?
And if so, what will replace it?
Photo Taken March 14th 2024
