Brexit, the future of Europe and democracy

[Stéphane Gibon-Clément]

Dear all,
All is in the title.
What do you guys think about brexit? Is the UK going to enter a long recession, thrive or not change ?
Would it be better to have more democracy in the EU (for example, electing the EU commission president and the one of the BCE, more transparency in the big meetings etc) or is it better off leaving it to the experts (aristocracy then?). And would it change anything anyway ?
And who is really in power ? Without going as far as conspiracy theories, there is indeed a resentment growing against the plutocrats. Is it founded in your opinion ? And are they the old bourgeoisie or are they the new netocrats ?
And what the f*ck should we do to make things better ? I found Diem25 (democracy in Europe movement, started by ex Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and supported by Slavoj Zizek)to be a nice alternative to powerless party politics. Have you guys heard about it ? What do you think of it ?

Loads of question in one post, but this topic raises so many !
Best to all of you.

[Alexander Bard]

Dear Stéphane

Democracy is already dying. The current populism will merely end in even further disappointment. Simply because there is no way back to an isolationist nationalism, for anybody, anywhere. Brexit has been blown out of all proportions, it is certainly not a live or die issue for neither Europe nor Britain. Rather an act of rage from the conservative English countryside against London's urban cosmopolitanism et al. Much like Middle America hates both Washington and San Francisco these days because it is losing out on globalisation and digitalisation. But hatred and rage will achieve nothing when democracy has lost power to an ever more confusing plurarchy of diffuse powers. The current crisis is therefore spiritual and existential rather than political. More or less democracy within the EU will not change a thing. However clean air and social intelligence will. Spirtual crises go way deeper than the political headlines in surfacial news reports.

Best intentions

Alexander

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[Alexander K-r]

Hello Stephane

I'm not too involved in UK and global geopolitics, although I think the biggest damage done is to the UK. Their credibility will probably get damaged. For example, when Scotland was voting for indepence, England said that they'll stay in the EU if Scotland votes stay. And now they are in the process of leaving. So let fabolous Scotland have their new referendum and let them join the nordic council/union.  (And hopefully we can have a real nordic union in the future :D)

Anyway, I think that EU itself will have to change a bit in order to hold the conservative (and communist? The Swedish "communist" party wants to leave EU) forces at bay. There has already been talks about such a change. So as a counter reaction to Brexit, it seems that the ones who rule and control seems to realize they need to compromise and make deals with their countet parts, if unity is to prevail and last. One important step towards the global state?

And as to who's in power, I am no one to speculate. But I do believe strongly that people who is not in any perticular political party, or do not mind changing party, will be more listened to. Why? Because they will have an outside view and will be more objective, while still having much to say about many things. We can already see this during elections where social media is playing a bigger and bigger role. Thus people like Alexander Bard probably will be more appreciated and listened to.

Best of luck in yours thoughts Stephane!

[Stéphane Gibon-Clément]

Dear Alexanders,

Thank you for your responses!
The nation state seems indeed irrelevant, however it has still a very strong symbolic of identity creation, especially with language.
One of the thing that I think raises concerns is the loss of cultural and language diversity. Aren't we risking a boring homogeneity if the nation state collapses ? Or could the regional city states bring even
more diversity?

And regarding the EU, what about its actual policies ?
If I understood well states get bankrupt because of having given the capacity of money creation to private banks which then lend it to the state with interest rate, and those same banks bailout the state on conditions of adopting austerity measures which leads to loss of GDP and therefore loss of any chance for them to pay back (Greece lost 30% of its GDP ! And they are even losing HDI !). It doesn't seem very efficient and in the interest of everyone.
And basically all trade deficit states are going to end in the same basket, as I have heard.
Is that flat out wrong ?
And in that model it does seem like it is the one with the most capital that has the power, so still not netocrats ?

Mr Bard, the spiritual crisis you are referring to, is it the need to feel part of something bigger than yourself (ie, the tribe/network), very much revived after a period of individualistic egoism ?
And what do you mean by clean air and social intelligence? Environmental protection and people connecting ? (I however about this Tafta between the EU and the US, which seems bad for the environment).

And I which people like Mr Bard and slavoj sisek, yania varoufakis and Julian assange would be more listened to indeed!

Best to you both.

[Alexander Bard]

We killed thousands and thousands of dialects in Europe when we introduced the national tongues in the 17th and 18th centuries. Centralisation is a huge megatrend that has been running for over 5,000 years. And like all such movements it comes with both gains and losses. Moralising on which gain or loss has priority is not really my cup of tea. I would much rather look at the spiritual consequences of such developments. Which is why all current debates on the EU and Brexit overdo the bigger roles of those specific topics. Much more important things are going on (whether Britain is officially in or out of the EU is not the big issue of our generation but rather just a symbolic headline disguising what is truly important). Those are my ten cents.

So, what can replace the dysfunctional and collapsing nation-state as main generator of social identities? The netocrats are those who generate and control that identity production. Power will come their way.

Brotherly love

Alexander

[Alexander K-r]

Greetings again, Stephane!

The issue about language in a global world certainly is a fascinating one!! To begin with, we already have a language which is becoming increasingly dominant, called English. It's the first real global language. And it has been for a few decades now, so English will probably stay.

As for disapearing languages and dialects, I don't know what to feel. Our mother tounges will probably stay within the old nation state border if it's a bigger nation as in Germany, Sweden or isolated place like Iceland.

While many languages are disapearing, and we have about 7000 languages today, we might only have 600 in a hundred years. But the thing is most of them were small languages talked by tribes. I mean real tribes in the amazon or african tribes. But dialects are also starting to become a social trend again, which seems interesting!

The economy part I cannot say anything about. The problem really is that we have a 150 year old view of money and think they're important. We don't realise that money is just basically a fantasy we've all agreed upon. In other words, what would we do if money were no object?

The spiritual crisis that we, mainly the west, is experiencing the void left by religion. We can't any longer identify spiritually with a socially incompetent father figure with angst. So we get messed up. So we needed a new thing to turn to, and we turn to our selves. Note, not ourselves. We turned to the feeling inside our heads called ego. It started with judaism and grew in Europe with christianity with guilt, responsibilities towards God etc. And since our egos are really a hallucination the world gets messed up. We don't recognise our union with everyone else and everything else. Plus, how often to we wholeheartedly laugh and smile?

This reminds of a quote: "Is it only when you're in love with another person, that you see them as they really are? And in the ordinary sense, when you're not in love, you see only a fragmented version of their being. Because when you're in love, you do indeed see them as a divine being. And suppose that's what they are, truly. And your eyes have, by your beloved, been opened. If you should be so fortunate to experience this spiritual experience, it seems to me to be a total denial of life to refuse it." Alan Watts never fails to amaze!

Hope to hear more voices here! And again, best of luck Stephane! :)

[Stéphane Gibon-Clément]

Dear Mr Bard,
May I ask what important changes you are referring to ?

Dear Mr K-R and Mr Bard,
I remember reading in the netocrats that the interest of the network passes before that of the individual. Could it be, in a pink world maybe, that it would ultimately lead to respecting the interest of the whole via more non zero sum games that would connect each other even more ?

As for the language, I suppose what is the most important is that the boundary of language gets broken down via English to connect everybody. Couldn't it be possible that Hindi or Mandarin take over? It's probably too late though.

In the global empire there is a part about how now it is "one dollar, one vote" and that the global state would be needed for a genuine "one human, one vote". So is democracy really dying (the credibility of representative democracy certainly is)? And couldn't we connect the idea of global democracy to a spiritual love of the whole ?

Best of luck to you both !

[Alexander K-r]

As far as the language is concerned, English will most likely stay the dominant world language. Mandarin might very well become more popular. Not only because China has seen an economic growth or that many people speak it. But also that it is down to earth and is close to nature. For example, the chinese word for nature means that which happens of itself. Like nature. Trees just grows. Your hair grows by itself etc. In that sense it's also spiritual. So we could say Mandarin is quite a netocratic (or syntheistic) language ;)

As far as Hindu is concerned, it's spoken in India where over 20 languages are official languages. And if India would chose a language which would be the main language, it would probably be English. Why Hindi over English? English=world. As far as the other matters are concerned, I don't know much about. Hopefully brother Bard can enlighten us further!

[Alexander Bard]

Dear Stéphane and Alexander

There are so many questions on the future thrown into the air here. And although they may be endlessly fascinating to discuss, they are generally of a highly speculative nature. So personally I prefer to stay with the issues that are more spiritual in nature (this is after all what this specific forum is for) and those that can really be addressed in a profound rather than superficial manner. And this only when I can set aside time to discuss these issues as this right now takes away valuable time from work on my next, fifth book with Jan Söderqvist. But this mailing list also has loads of other members beside myself who might want to step in. However please remember though that this is a Syntheist mailing list on Syntheist issues. Political issues without any direct spiritual angle are frankly not part of this forum's agenda. Please respect this.

All the very best intentions

Alexander

[Alexander K-r]

Good that you remind us, Alexander! I think you, Stephane, would do best to continue this on a syntheist forum or philosophy forum!

Best of luck Stephanie!

[Stéphane Gibon-Clément]

Dear Mr Bard and Mr K-R,

I understand, I am sorry for the spam and will switch to more spiritual questions.
It is just hard however to know what is meant by spiritual ? Would things like transrationnalism be ok ?

Wishing you the best of luck for your book.
Kindest regards to you both !

[Alexander Bard]

Yes, we can discuss transrationalism if you like. I certainly think philosophical issues qualify within the spritual realm.

But let's keep political and technological speculations on the future to a minimum in this forum.

There are thousands of facebook forums available for that already.

Best

Alexander

[Stéphane Gibon-Clément]

Which forum, Parallax ?

Please don't kick me out of this one too.

Le dimanche 14 août 2016 à 10:05:10 UTC+2, bardi...@gmail.com a écrit :

Yes, we can discuss transrationalism if you like. I certainly think philosophical issues qualify within the spritual realm.

But let's keep political and technological speculations on the future to a minimum in this forum.

There are thousands of facebook forums available for that already.

Best

Alexander

2016-08-14 9:31 GMT+02:00 'Stéphane Gibon-Clément' via Syntheism <synt...@googlegroups.com>:

Dear Mr Bard and Mr K-R,

I understand, I am sorry for the spam and will switch to more spiritual questions.
It is just hard however to know what is meant by spiritual ? Would things like transrationnalism be ok ?

Wishing you the best of luck for your book.
Kindest regards to you both !

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