Let's Not Go On Being Stupid

LET’S NOT GO ON BEING STUPID

Nothing personal of course! Oh dear me, no! Such discourtesy!

It’s just that I have come to realise that probably the strongest force in human life, the root causes of most of the significant things that happen in the world today, are not so much considered policies as the after-effects of unadmitted failures of the imagination, or, to put it crudely, stupidities.

It is important to try to see this clearly, but first let me offer a definition. Everybody, including politicians, makes mistakes. These are usually accidental and can sometimes be called stupid but I think that what I would call stupid is a failure, or refusal, once that mistake has become apparent, to recognise it and attempt to put it right.

During the past century a whole menu of startlingly dangerous pieces of stupidity has come to light. The effects of global warming from the unfettered use of fossil fuel are now physically well under way. They are spoken about, disputed and discussed, but very little happens even though it is well known that effects are self-inducing and the future of the entire world may depend on its being dealt with very promptly. The depletion of the planet’s oxygen supply by the destruction of the rain forests is also proceeding apace. The world is awash with people-killing tools for righteous murderers to use, but the bountiful supply from the Arms Trade cannot be stemmed because it is profitable. The discontent, jealousy and hatred that inevitably flourishes in a world where nine-tenths of its wealth is in the hands of one-tenth of its people is being made ever more intense as television flaunts our wealth to the world. These and many other dangers were observed long ago and our leaders have gone on doing little or nothing about them long, long after they should have taken them into account and put a stop to them.

We, ourselves, as individuals, sometimes hear about these perils but, being individuals, there is not a lot we can do about them except wave pieces of cardboard in the street and occasionally vote.

So we need to try and think what it is that prevents those otherwise apparently reasonable people who are in charge of the planet: the MPs, the Prime Ministers, the Presidents, working out and taking the steps that are literally urgently needed to save the world.

There may be several answers. One could be that, although the world has changed, the politicians have yet to come to terms with the implications of the changes, and consequently their thinking is still based on assumptions that are dangerously out-of-date. To take a current example: "to go to war" is still being regarded as a viable ultimate option, even though it has long been clear that apart from certain very exceptional circumstances, war has become not only unwinnable but is also so universally damaging as to be disastrous for both winner and loser, leaving in its wake provocations to revenge and terrorism that may continue indefinitely.

It is clearly stupid not to see that this is so, but it is also clear that such a perception could not easily be entertained by a country like the USA because all its pretensions to political power and ‘greatness’ are based on its assumption that its military might is still mighty. Similarly, to "defend our way of life" is a rousing call, but what has become very apparent is that the delicacy and complexity of modern Western culture has left it quite incapable of defending itself against anybody who has the technical know-how and a mobile phone. To "make war on terrorism" is an understandable reaction to the atrocity of Nine-Eleven, but in any literal sense it is meaningless because there is no tangible visible enemy to make war on. Although ‘war on the causes of terrorism’ may be what is meant, it must be remembered that as terrorism is likely to be self-generating wherever gross injustice is perceived, it cannot be defeated by force.

When one hears the rousing speeches of President Bush one has to remember that he is not speaking to us, or even to the whole world. He is speaking to his electoral base, the Conservatives in the Middle-West of the USA, trying to assure them, and perhaps himself, that those belligerent, but now absurd, assertions have substance.

Those are particularly dangerous examples of stupidity, of political expediency over-riding demonstrable fact, but politicians have always tailored their speeches to suit their audiences, and where there is bad or unwelcome news it is axiomatic that they cannot tell it to their people unless and until they have worked out an acceptable way to deal with it. For a politician to stand up in front of his electors and say: "This is the true situation. It is dreadful and I have no idea what to do about it." might be no more than the truth, but it would be widely regarded as electoral suicide.

So, to come closer to home, maybe the answer to the question of why our own politicians do not give prominence to global perils may lie in the processes of politics, or rather, may the gods forgive me, somewhere in the entrails of that sacred cow whose name is Democracy and whose nature is thought to be ‘government by the will of the people’.

Perhaps we could start by asking another question: ‘Is our present form of government a true Democracy? Does it seek, and then carry out, the will of the people?’

If we were able to ask ‘the people’ what, given the current dire situation in the world, ‘their will’ is, they would without doubt answer: "to continue to be alive of course." So it is clear that the absolute priority of our elected leaders should be, and should have been, to try and deal with the very real global dangers that face us.

However, it is evident that although the existence of these dangers is not actually denied, the prospect of addressing them seems to come a long way down on the agenda of most politicians. As a rule they seem to have a more urgent need to let us know that their particular party’s programme for further improving our present standard of living is an imperative reason for us to support them and trust them to oversee our lives.

This seems to indicate that perhaps today’s Democracy isn’t quite: ‘government by the will of the people’ after all.

Could it perhaps be said that nowadays Democracy consists in: ‘a political party securing for itself the power to govern, as it thinks fit, by keeping the voters complacent and promising to provide them with goodies’?

If so, one can see that this could put a prospective Parliamentary candidate in a difficult position. The temptation to promise people more of the good things of life must be very strong, but of course we must assume that a sensible candidate would know better than to do that if he or she knew that the promises might not be delivered, that there were long-term dangers inherent in making them or that there were far more important things that needed to be seen to first. But unfortunately our candidate is the creature of a political party and must obey its Whip. Also there are other candidates belonging to other parties who will, they fear, be likely to offer the electorate a golden future in which the true realities of the situation are concealed. Consequently our candidate must seek, or support, a promise that is visibly attractive, even if it may be invisibly unwise, possibly harmful, and have nothing to do with concerns that really matter. In this way a commitment to potential stupidity becomes a built-in part of the electoral process.

One consequence of the political parties taking over Parliament is that Parliament’s true function - the exercise of good government - can too easily be set aside and replaced by the on-going inter-party struggle directed towards the acquisition of the power to govern.

This, if you remember, is what happened most frighteningly in 1973 when the squabble between the Labour Party supporting the miners and the Conservative Party representing Big Business occupied the whole of the attention of Parliament, filled all the newspapers and left the economic health of the nation to plummet like a stone into disaster.

Another consequence is the situation we have today. One party, by abandoning its principles and employing the sharp practices of public relations, has obtained for itself such an overwhelming majority of Members who are subject to its discipline, that its leader no longer considers himself answerable to Parliament and has created, with his cronies, a virtual oligarchy.

Even so, at a time when the ordinary tasks facing the political parties are essentially similar, much Parliamentary time is used up in ritual conflict between them, on scoring minor political points, while the real dangers to the planet hang about on the side-lines waiting for the day to come when their effects bite deep enough for it to become electorally prudent for them to be attended to. By then it will probably be too late.

That is stupid.

On the wider canvas of international affairs, we inevitably see Iraq.

To free that country from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein was generally accepted as being a good idea. The conventional wisdom was that the way to do it was by a military invasion. The leaders of our two largest political parties still proclaim that going to war was ‘the right thing to do’.

They are wrong about that. It wasn’t.

In this particular case, going to war was not ‘the right thing to do’ because the U.S., even if it had had the legal right to invade Iraq, was not properly equipped to do it! The U.S.-led Coalition has been widely criticised because it didn’t have an ‘exit strategy’ in place before charging in, but the main trigger of its current chaos was the fact that it didn’t have an ‘entry strategy’.

Allow me to explain.

Traditionally the prerequisite of a successful invasion is that you need to know what you are going to do when you get there. Something that was obvious from the start, even before they went in, was that, apart from chasing Saddam, the US forces had only the very vaguest idea what they were there to do. Of course the Iraqi military defences dissolved before their might, shed their uniforms and slipped away into the back-streets with their weapons. Of course that meant that President Bush was able to do his "Mission Accomplished" act. But then what?

The US forces didn’t know the language. They couldn’t ask people who was friend and who was foe. All they could do when they got there was shoot at people, shout at people, and kick in their doors. Of course there was nothing else they could do, but nevertheless doing it was, by any standards, stupid. It provoked hatred. It legitimated random violence. It invited terrorism into a place where all order had already been shattered. The resulting bloody chaos, the looting, the lawlessness, even the warring of religious factions were predictable (in fact they had been predicted, loud and often, but President Bush had waved them aside).

The tragic mayhem in Iraq could not possibly have been intentional, but at the same time it cannot be said to have been an accident, because it was widely observed, and ample warning given, that this was the most likely outcome of the action, an outcome which could almost certainly have been avoided if the Coalition had deigned to take the advice of the United Nations.

So I submit that the current situation in Iraq is the direct result of a piece of plain stupidity on the part of George W Bush, and of his friend, our Prime Minister, who (to its credit) had to threaten Parliament with dangers that weren’t there before he could force its hand.

The tragedy of Iraq is a terrible testament to the effects of unbridled stupidity. God knows when or how it will end, if it ever does. God may also know when or whether the people of the world may one day recover their will, be able to choose leaders who will sit together under the tree of life and, in the face of possible disasters, try to seek agreement on the wisest way to care for it.

The United Nations was formed for this purpose. It has been regularly subverted, undermined, vilified, impoverished, corrupted and pushed aside by proud nation-states which cannot bring themselves to relinquish any of their power, private greed and ambition but, none the less, it remains, and must remain, doing what it can while waiting for the day to come when nations put aside stupidity and come to their senses, because for them to do that is the only hope we have.

Meanwhile . . . what?

We in the West are partaking of the Good Life, enjoying the conspicuous consumption that is pressed upon us by commerce and our politicians, who need our trade and value our complacency as evidence of their success. It is difficult for us to come to terms with the thought that our way of life is invisibly based on a degree of unjust exploitation, waste and conspicuous consumption that is not only breeding hatred, but is also fast destroying the planet itself.

If we were to turn and embrace the Simple Life at once, our civilization would cease to function, our financial institutions would collapse and law and order break down. So that is not an immediate solution.

However, Democracy is still there. Our politicians do, in the final analysis, depend upon our votes and support. If enough of us allow ourselves to see beyond political trivia and look carefully at the policies on offer, asking whether, in view of the world situation, they make sense - and if they don’t, reject them and those who originate them, giving our support to policies and parties that do make sense, then being sensible might begin to have real political value. This could set a new dimension in politics which might begin to lead the world back to its senses before it is too late.

So, as I suggested, let us not, even by acquiescence, go on supporting stupidity.

Oliver Postgate

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