Friday 28 February 2020

It's Friday in Oran...an interlude with Sisyphus



It's Friday in Oran...an interlude with Sisyphus.. The crisis of globalisation begins as the economic slow down takes effect. An unforeseen event shows exactly the effects of the black swan landing in the backyard of Europe. As climate change bites and Heathrow expansion is turned down we see a coming collision between conventional economic growrh and the need to limit emissions. As we flirt with descriptions of pandemic our: 'mature' democracy staggers towards panic . The streets are quieter and brooding with a sense of anxiety. As we look around we experience the continuation of culture wars as the western mind undergoes rapid an ever becoming revolution of identity.
Perhaps the greatest irony yet will be that the authoritarian state capitalists of China will be far more effective in resisting the corona virus. Would it not be odd if the myth of self and individualism was the Trojan horse that slew capitalism. Within 20 years of the claim of the victory of liberal capitalism we near an end to it's domination. It was not peak oil that was it's assasin it was corona.
The structures of globalisation, it's facilities exposed unconscious beyond comprehension are revealed as the fears of Ricardo, Malthus, Adam Smith and Marx become prophetic. The hints in the texts and the footnotes of the chroniclers of political economy move from the implicit to the explicit. As I said on Monday we all live in Oran now and the challenge to all is whether we are a resistor, collaborator or other.....this is the age of Camus as absurdity points out the flaws in the stassi capitalists of Johnson's government on Brexit Island....who will be Tarrou or Dr Rieux or indeed Rambert? Perhaps Sisyphus will have the last laugh as the corona virus stalks the market? Events, dear boy , events ...the road ahead cannot be seen....cannot be felt as the stock market staggers back to 2008 and all the logic of neo liberalism revealed once more as false...on Radio 4 the PM programme discuss with subtle seeding how we can cope in the age of pandemic...with restriction, limitation and a tinge of panic..

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