This is a beautiful testament to the need to erase colonial borders. I'll add, when you say this arrangement provides "welfare" for the Global North, I know what you mean but would say it doesn't really provide us with "welfare" either. It gives us niceties, like big houses, lots of food options and clothes, expensive travel, etc. But none of that is worth the daily weight of climate collapse, overwork, increasing precarity where it matters (health, retirement), and knowing your government/culture/country/self is complicit in (if not directly committing) genocide, enslavement, ecocide, etc. No one is a winner in this system.
Thank you Arwen. And you are quite right! Yes, the differentiation around what is "welfare" is important. The system provides us with so many cheapened gadgets, with basics that keeps us alive, like cheapened, unhealthy food, etc. But still, the narrative that we in the North have achieved "welfare" or the democratization of consumption, is very strong.... If we could look through the absurd excess, en masse, at some point...
Your vignette of the medical couple and their 'employee' is a powerful description of the double standards western society employs. The compartmentalisation required to manage this is immense and is certainly being eroded by the gloves-off approach of modern colonialist practice. What comes next though is certainly up for grabs
As I contemplate the future Hope and Fear dance together as we are all swept along the rapids of this disintegrating order.
Quite right, we find ourselves in a dance of hope and fear. And I like the idea of the “compartmentalisation” needed to manage our outrageous present. Thanks Richard!
This is a beautiful testament to the need to erase colonial borders. I'll add, when you say this arrangement provides "welfare" for the Global North, I know what you mean but would say it doesn't really provide us with "welfare" either. It gives us niceties, like big houses, lots of food options and clothes, expensive travel, etc. But none of that is worth the daily weight of climate collapse, overwork, increasing precarity where it matters (health, retirement), and knowing your government/culture/country/self is complicit in (if not directly committing) genocide, enslavement, ecocide, etc. No one is a winner in this system.
Thank you Arwen. And you are quite right! Yes, the differentiation around what is "welfare" is important. The system provides us with so many cheapened gadgets, with basics that keeps us alive, like cheapened, unhealthy food, etc. But still, the narrative that we in the North have achieved "welfare" or the democratization of consumption, is very strong.... If we could look through the absurd excess, en masse, at some point...
Your vignette of the medical couple and their 'employee' is a powerful description of the double standards western society employs. The compartmentalisation required to manage this is immense and is certainly being eroded by the gloves-off approach of modern colonialist practice. What comes next though is certainly up for grabs
As I contemplate the future Hope and Fear dance together as we are all swept along the rapids of this disintegrating order.
Quite right, we find ourselves in a dance of hope and fear. And I like the idea of the “compartmentalisation” needed to manage our outrageous present. Thanks Richard!