One world, one operating system

[imomus]

It's Sunday, so here's a sermon. My message today is something very big and simple. Something about what I perceive to be the general situation in the world today, and how I therefore define my idea of what's "evil". Sorry to sound so theological, but it is a Sunday. Okay, here it is:

The real problem today is not what a few people do, but what everybody does. Evil is not to be found in the "extremist" behaviour of a minority, but deep in the habitus of the majority.

The backdrop to this idea—and we'll see later what huge consequences it has—is the general picture. It's so big we sometimes miss it. There are too many human beings on the planet—6 billion, expected to rise to 9 billion within the next 50 years—and our "success" in sustaining ourselves may in fact turn out to be our biggest failure, destroying not only ourselves but everything on the planet. Half of the earth's land mass has been changed by human activity, and when global warming really hits that figure will rise rapidly towards 100%. Thanks to human "success" 25% of all bird species have been lost, and two-thirds of the major fisheries around the world have been fully exploited or depleted. Almost 1100 species of birds and mammals are currently facing extinction.

Success is failure in the current situation for the same reason it is in economics: unrestrained "success" leads to monopolies. Humans are monopolizing this planet, stripping it of the diversity it needs to survive. It isn't just other species which suffer, it's also human ways of living which are less ruthlessly "efficient". "Success" leads to monoculture. Just as other species of creatures are disappearing thanks to human activity, other less "efficient" ways of being human are being wiped out too. Speciecide is matched by linguicide and culturcide, the erasure of distinctive languages and cultures. The United Nations estimates that half of the world’s current 6,000 languages will disappear in less than a century, while half of the world’s people now use one of just eight languages: Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese and French.

I visit zoos and museums a lot, and love them as places where difference and diversity are displayed. But both experiences are laced with distinct sadness: museums are the object-records of "failed" cultures wiped out by "successful" ones, and zoos are places where "failed" species are corralled for the one successful species (ourselves) to ogle at. Almost every sign at a modern zoo has a "status" section where the degree of endangerment of the animal we're looking at is rated. All too often that level is "high". And the thing doing the endangering is invariably ourselves, our human monoculture.

In such a context, we need a new definition of "evil". Our politicians tell us that "evil" is summed up best by the behaviour of a small minority of deviants — terrorists, insurgents, extremists, rogue states... those, in short, who think, act, look and live differently from the great majority of us. According to these authorities, one would be more likely to find "evil" in a person dressed in robes and a veil, motivated by religion, than a person dressed in sports shoes, jeans and a black jacket, motivated by money. A sure sign of "evil", to these politicians, is the stubborn resistance to the standards and norms of "the international community". The "axis of evil" is always out there in what they do, never in here in what we do.

But if my assessment of the overall picture is correct, this is completely the wrong message. "Evil" is not divergence but convergence. "Evil" is not difference but unity. "Evil" is monoculture. "Evil" is success and economic growth without thought for the massive erasures it causes, the environmental havoc it wreaks, the biological and cultural diversity it reduces. Evil is, in short, the thing we all do because it's right, efficient and successful. Having children, speaking one of the eight "killer" languages, driving a car, using the dominant computer software (computing too is a culture; Windows currently has 93% of the desktop OS market; Apple, the next biggest, has 2.9%), converging and conforming until our habits of life resemble those of the majority. Want to look "evil"? Dress like everybody else in the monoculture: mesh cap, black jacket, jeans, white shoes.

In the circumstances, virtue also needs to be redefined. In view of the overall picture of monoculture—one world, one operating system—it's a virtue to act, dress, think and feel differently from the "successful", to learn and speak a minority language, to own no car, to have no children, to earn and spend less this year than your earned and spent last year. It's a virtue to try to reverse speciecide, linguicide, culturcide. It's a virtue to immerse yourself in the worlds and ways of thinking of the kind of "failed cultures" you find in museums, to preserve and investigate ways of life currently on the cusp of disappearance. Our "success" may be leading to the mother of all failures, but if we find the courage to embrace and investigate all the ways different peoples and animals have "got it wrong" (in other words, preserved a diversity of co-existing rightnesses) over the millenia, we may still be able to succeed... and survive.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

There's a lot of unspoken assumptions behind this about what we should be aiming for.

If it's to preserve/conserve the earth as long as possible, and to allow other species to flourish, then maybe you'd be better off suggesting that humans are vastly overpopulated and should be reduced?

But who says it's better to go out with a whimper rather than a bang?

Everything falls apart in the end anyway.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

who says it's better to go out with a whimper rather than a bang?

The big bland bang of some arrogant denimclad majority who think "success" means all crossing the finishing line together and delivering the world a happy ending...? Oh spare me! I'd rather be cooked in a pot by a lost tribe of headhunters who at least sang interesting songs in an undocumented language.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know why I am arguing because I am all in favour of diversity.

I guess I have a problem with the idea of calling the activity of lots of ordinary, everyday, people 'evil'.

I think of humans as the same as any other animal: their activity is just what they do. It isn't 'good' or 'evil' in relation to some external authority.

Taking the 'big picture', as you put it, I don't think it's 'evil' that so many people are denimclad,focussed on David Beckham, Hello magazine, brand obsessed etc - it's just incredibly odd. (Actually, I think it's odd that anything exists at all, but maybe I took too many mushrooms at a formative age)

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

...speaking one of the eight "killer" languages

I hope you're not implying that I or anyone else in the fringes of the linguistic map should go back to not understanding English speakers merely to be interestingly different?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Anything people all do at the same time, if there are enough people, has the potential to destroy the world. I'm sure if we all jumped up in the air at exactly the same time the earth would be thrown off its axis.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Four generations ago my ancestors spoke Gaelic as their first language. That doesn't mean they didn't understand English, but it does mean they had two ways of looking at the world instead of just one.

[dermfitz.livejournal.com]

How does this answer zenicurean's question? Can you expand? On this point, I mean, not literally.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

'Want to look "evil"? Dress like everybody else in the monoculture: mesh cap, black jacket, jeans, white shoes.'

What percentage of the American population would you conjecture conforms to this dress code? :)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I've just noticed I was singing from the same hymnbook—and using the same entry title, "One World, One Operating System", from a song I once wrote (it was supposed to come out on a 1997 EP called "Sports Pierrot")—back in May 2004 (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/25154.html). And it wasn't even a Sunday!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Easily 65%, I'd conjecture. Got webcams?

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

You must be talking about a very particular neighborhood (or perhaps more accurately, a very particular age group that participates in the type of culture you involve yourself with; quite a sampling of transience, eh?). :)

There are 300 million people in America. People from one part of the country have trouble understanding the dialects of those from other parts of the country. My experience with living and traveling in the United States is that, if there is a consistent dresscode, it is an untucked t-shirt and a grip of processed food. I think color schemes and fashions are far below the radar of most of adult America. I do acknowledge what you are talking about exists -- but it is hardly the dominant form for the vast majority of the population. If you give it a couple of years it will be replaced by something new and more offensive anyway. Probably within fifteen years the fashions that disgust you now may actually become the norm.

Repeat this to yourself: The character of a country like the United States, with geography and population that dwarfs most nations on earth, may not confined by trends that fluctuate amongst the creative classes in a select few urban centers. Have you been following Bernard-Henri Lévy's 'In The Footsteps Of Tocqueville' series in The Atlantic, by any chance? He seems to have a fairly well-rounded view of the emergent subtleties of the American cultural landscape.

[trufflesniffer.livejournal.com]

If you're suggesting one should adopt a consequentialist, rather than rule-based, definition of 'evil', then I think I agree.
If you're suggesting, however, that monopoly and homogeneity is always, rather than just usually, 'evil', then I'm not sure (because that sounds like a 'rule'!)

Perhaps Microsoft is a good example: Bill Gates is the richest man on the planet, but could well turn out to be its most effective (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3598720) philanthropist (http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=3599374).
I personally think limited choice of computer operating systems is a price worth paying to stop tens of millions of children from dying of starvation and preventable disease.

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

"It's a virtue to try to reverse speciecide, linguicide, culturcide."

Yeh, but there's only so far you can go, though, before you give up on the species, the language, or whatever you're trying to reverse.

The French have really strict rules about their language. They rarely introduce anything new. The English language on the other hand is like a big sponge absorbing and assimulating all the time, with hundreds of words added every year. Some peoplke don't like that, but it evolves quickly. Maybe that's why it's a 'killer' language?I don't think it's evolution or premier position makes it evil.

Anyway, you're usually a critic of museum culture! That kind-of seems to be what you're offering when you talk about 'reversing'

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

It's not that imomus doesn't make some good points there, but taken to its logical extreme even this conversation is an exercise in mixing cultures. imomus is, I believe, a multiculturalist and he loves diversity, but he often seems to be adamantly against the idea of cultures adapting to each other and becoming less distinctive. He wants variety and fears what the Anglophone world can do to it.

I don't share all his fears. I think some of them might be unjustified. I can understand his concerns with coca-colanisation, and sympathize with them, but he occasionally looks at the process of cultural globalisation as if it were entirely and unconditionally coercive. Now, I might've been "Hellenised" - or "Romanised", I should say - by my knowledge of English language, but I can't really say that's a unilaterally bad thing. English doesn't owe its prevalence solely to colonialism and imperialism, it also packs considerable inherent utility. I'm running Win98 on my computer, again because it packs considerable inherent utility. I don't have a car, but I use public transportation, once again because of its vast utility.

imomus could obviously always argue that, being a part of the political right wing, I simply see no problem in overconsuming resources and am therefore a part of the very real environmental problem imomus presents above. Still, I also have a number of friends who use these selfsame tools to push forward global environmental conservation, global social justice (in the sense our socialist friends understand it) and global fair trade. Without these standardized, measured, regulated, boxed tools, offered to them by the Anglophone culture, they could not do that as efficiently as they now can.

Most cultural golden ages are begun when cultures interact, mix, and finally begin to meld together. In the context of Momus's original post, that might or might not be a good thing. Trade, technology, art... they're not always unconditionally constructive things. They obviously fuel consumption in a world of finite resources. Still, I'm very much opposed to the idea of me having to sit in my cave, speak only an exotic minority language,and grow my own turnips, simply because of a vague moral imperative to stay different from some random guy in Arizona. And that's what some of imomus's post almost seemed to imply.

[(Anonymous)]

"Unconcious" would be a better, perhaps more buddhist term - people are
ill-informed about the consequences of their actions; the evil is more in any systems (chronic poor education, automobile adverts) that keep them consuming.

I've done my part I think (40, no car, no kids, fruitlessly searching for a walkable neighbourhood...)

[(Anonymous)]

Hmmm...interesting that this posting is meeting with limited agreement...I think it's the 'sermon' approach which is the problem.

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

About a quarter of the world's population (notably in China) consists of peasant farmers. Not only do they not know the difference between Nike and Adidas, or Levis and Gap, they don't know what trainers or jeans are.

Maybe they need a "Cultural Revolution". ;)

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

This the anti-globalisation debate again, isn't it?

There's also a bit of James Lovelock's Gaia Theory going on.

I have a lot of sypathy with your viewpoint, but it raises more questions than it answers. (A bit like most religious sermons, if you ask me!)

FWIW, my own view of "evil" is that it is a synonym for "selfishness". I also don't think there is anything we can do about it. Evil, aka selfishness, is written into the DNA of every human that ever existed; survival of the fittest and all that.
Eventually, humans will make the Earth uninhabitable for all but the most priviledged. By merely existing, we are complicit in our eventual downfall. Part of me wishes the apocalypse would arrive sooner rather than later....

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

If millions of children's lives are saved, then the population can get even bigger and we can fuck the world up even more. Great!
While Gates' philanthropy can only be applauded, I would think that lowering the birth rate in poor countries is a more pressing matter than lowering the death rate.

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

Gates' monopolisation of charity could be construed as evil. His Foundation is pretty US-centric and subject to Gates' own whims. I'd be much happier if he merely gave his millions to the UN and let democracy choose where to spend the cash.

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

I think Momus is saying "Knowing how to speak English AND another language is a Good Thing". Allowing English to 'kill off' other languages would be a Bad Thing.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

We have almost successed with the failure, but we have failed to make a success!

Errr...

[(Anonymous)]

The figure is much higher than 1100. According to the IUCN's 2004 Red List, the number of known species (including plants) facing extinction stands at 15,589.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Hello Momus.

I am in almost complete agreement with what you say here. I haven't read all the other comments, I'm afraid, because I don't have time right now, so I apologise if I am repeating anything.

The only thing I have a slight possible disagreement with is the idea that the dominant cultures are efficient. They are efficient at domination, perhaps, but they are generally cultures of waste, and it is waste that is devastating the environment. Economic expansion also relies on waste rather than efficiency.

This is an issue I feel strongly about, and I do agree that the only 'moral' thing we can do - certainly the only way I can feel at all good about my life - is to try and live in and for all that is being wiped out by the monoculture at the moment.

I can't help thinking of the Talking Heads track Listening Wind. There is some diginity in going down with a sinking ship. Not just diginity. It seems like the only thing worth doing.

I recently posted something about this on my blog (http://my.opera.com/quentinscrisp/blog/show.dml/21250). Sorry it's so despairing. I get like that sometimes. But I just feel we have to take a long hard look at what's happening and decide what our values really are.

[theydontloveyou.livejournal.com]

"Unconcious" would be a better,

No I think people are VERY conscious of their decisions. Its the fact that they ignore it that I feel is the 'Evil.' Like, buying SUV's when they only drive in the suburbs and only have one child, etc. It's what they feel they need, and they produce the excuses they need to make themselves feel better for it. I think there are very few people are are actually unconcious these days - especially with so much publicity on the state of affairs of the weather - i.e. global warming, etc.
I'm not seeing too many people rush out and buy hybrids for the enviroment [ more so that it's cheaper than suv gas. ]