I'm tired of hearing the prophets of the globalization movement describe its onslaught as inevitable. The rhetoric goes that we need to adapt to social change if we are to survive, that globalization follows inexorable natural laws that cannot be changed or reversed, that its ruthless 'efficiency' will ultimately lead to a better world, blah blah blah.
The Washington Post's David Ignatius waxes lyrical on the positive social effects of the World Economic Forum in Davos:
Davos has come to symbolize the dominant force of our time — the wealth-creating, job-destroying whirlwind of the global economy. Each year I come here I marvel at the reach and leveling power of this economic hurricane...Business today is the leading agent of social change. That's really the message of Davos. It can be a pitiless process, and its seamless efficiency is in frightening contrast to the incompetence and mismanagement of the public sector. Globalization can be tamed, but it can't be stopped — nor should it be.
Such assertions are presented as self-evident truths that need not be explained, demonstrated or proven. The world must accommodate itself to a process that is as inevitable as the dawning of the sun each day...
Yet the changes taking place in the world today are not inevitable, not the predertmined outcome of abstract economic laws and market forces. They are conceived by human minds, propelled and shaped by human agency, nurtured by human labor, built upon the fields of human dreams and suffering. They may seem inevitable to most of us, but that is because of our lack of a broader and deeper perspective.
Even boosters like Ignatius acknowledge that the process has a downside. He admits that the 'hurricane' effects of globalization can be disastrous for individuals, classes of people, entire societies. He acknowledge that globalization brings misery to many. But his response?
Get over it. Learn new skills and find new jobs in more productive sectors. The flat world [...] is ruthlessly fair in that respect. Everybody must live on the knife edge of the global marketplace.
Most of the world does not relish the thought of living on the knife edge — especially when many already are living about as close to the edge as you can get.
The changes wrought by globalization are the cumulative effect of decades of effort by corporate power elites — and the governments that serve them — to impose a specific economic, political and social order beneficial to perpetuating and strengthening their vested interests. It is the ideological narrative of Empire, the new Truth, the new unthinking idolatry. No statesman or leader can survive long without bowing the knee to this great and shining idol.
And it's in the interest of the elites who benefit from globalization to have us believe in its absolute inevitability. Belief in the self-determination of individuals, families and societies must be eradicated. People must be discouraged from thinking they have a choice concerning what the future holds, that there are any choices at all. In order for the project to continue to move forward, dissenting voices and those calling for consideration of economic and social justice must be ignored, denied, dismissed, subverted, defamed or repressed — but never acknowledged as valid.
As more and more of the world's population comes to accept that such a massive upheaval and transfer of wealth to the powerful few is 'inevitable', the mantra gradually becomes morer entrenched as self-fulfilling prophecy. People are to be encouraged to think not of alternatives but of how best to adapt to the new world. People must learn to find their ordained place in the great scheme of things. Those that do not will be tossed aside.
Where are the prophets of old?
Who will call this massive and deadly deception by its true and ancient name?
Mystery Babylon... Mother of the abominations of the earth...
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