Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

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Well That Was Hell: 2024 In Review

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On December 31, 2024

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The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole

The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole

Not the best of all years. Annus Horriblus.

Gaza: Genocide continues and seems likely to be successful. I’d guess the actual casualties are somewhere north of 700K at this point, they sure aren’t anywhere close to the official numbers.  Never again meant nothing.

Hezbollah: Held the Israelis off on the ground, but were devastated by Mossad assassinations and terrorism (the cell phone attack) plus a bombing campaign against civilians they were unwilling to endure. Some signs the war may start up again after the 60 day ceasefire, but without air defense, I don’t think they have it in them to tough it out. Could be wrong.

Syria: I don’t know anyone who expected the Syrian army to collapse the way it did. Israel’s occupied an area about 4X that of Gaza and destroyed most of the Syrian army’s stockpiles, plane and air defenses. Syria’s pretty much defenseless. Some signs of a guerilla war starting against the new “government”. Meanwhile Turkey and its proxies are hammering the Kurds.

Iran: the leadership has proved extremely cautious, though the youngs in the Revolutionary Guard are not and when Khamenei dies, there may be a change in policy. Proved that Israel can’t stop their missile attacks, but unwilling to use them except under extreme provocation and pressure from the youngs. Lost their Syrian ally and Hezbollah has taken hard hits, while the population has lost faith in the system. Not a good year for them.

Russia: continues to grind forward in Ukraine. Economy is doing very well, thanks and they’re now arguably the 4th largest economy in the world, having overtaken Germany. Solid alliance with China. Pretty good year, actually.

Ukraine War: Russia’s winning and all signs are that the Ukrainian army is running out of manpower. Assuming Putin doesn’t accept a peace deal (he shouldn’t, unless Trump offers a better deal than Trump’s likely to offer) I expect the Ukrainian army to collapse in 2025 and the war to go big arrow. Most likely the war will end in a humiliating surrender, perhaps even an unconditional one.

Europe: Industrial collapse, especially in Germany. Germany and France are now ungovernable by either the center-right or left. France is being kicked out of Africa. China is buying fewer and fewer German cars and European goods. America is cannibalizing European industry thanks to lower energy costs. Without a massive turnaround in policy Europe is headed for a massive decline. Wouldn’t expect EU collapse in 2025, but 2026 is possible.

America: Continues its slow decline. Cannibalizing its allies industry to try to sustain itself. Largely unable to create new tech outside of the information sector. Costs are insane, the rabble are getting uppity and Trump is likely to pursue policies better for oligarchs than ordinary people. Loss in Ukraine will be a huge hit to American prestige and power.

Massive eighteen percent increase in homelessness, even as billionaires have doubled their wealth since 2020.

Yemen: The only truly moral nation in the world, as the only one going all out to try and stop a genocide. I don’t like their ideology much, but when they’re the only people standing up, so what?

Anglosphere (Canada, Britain, Australia): experimented with massive immigration and its skyrocked housing and rent and caused massive political instability. Labour and the Canadian Liberals will lose their next elections, but the people who will replace them are Trump-style tards and decline will continue even as looting of the public sector intensifies.

China: Slowing growth but still doing fine, thanks. Massive investment in industry, has taken the lead in about 80% of tech fields, including electric vehicles and drones. Pumping out naval vessels like there’s no tomorrow and has over a 1,000 ICBMs now. Moving up the semiconductor chain far faster than almost anyone (except me) predicted. Eating America and Europe’s lunch in the developing world, since they offer cheaper goods, development and loans without the hypocritcal lectures about human rights.

Generally speaking the decline of the American empire, the rise of a new cold war, the end of neoliberal globalization and the age of revolution and war are all on track as I predicted years ago. Climate change is accelerating, we’re ignoring it and morons are worried about population decline while humanity is in vast population overshoot. This isn’t the worst year of your life, it’s the best year of the rest of your life in geopolitical, economic and ecological terms.

Annus Horribulus will return next year.

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Bikes, Cars, Pedestrians and Local Business

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On September 30, 2024

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Alright, enough of the doom and gloom. Stumbled across a study on the impact of changing a four lane road in a retail area down to two lanes plus bike lanes. This sort of change is usually resisted by local businesses, who are scared of losing customers, but someone did a study:

I would have liked to see a study showing what happened to businesses nearby for comparison, but this study is still suggestive. And it’s not just that business was up, it’s that people who walk and cycle spend more:

(I’m running my annual fundraiser. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating. Your donations really do keep this place running.)

Which is to say, if you want to make more business you want more non-drivers and less drivers.

Besides, to point out the obvious, most drivers are going somewhere else. Most people who are walking or cycling live nearby, and people taking public transit have chosen to come to your area specifically.

Cities built for cars are inefficient, ugly and increase pollution massively. Cities built for pedestrians, cyclists and rapid transit are far, far more pleasant, as well as healthier and better for the environment. Part of the problem is the same as trains v.s. roads. When you add in all the costs, trains are cheaper and more efficient, but railroads are expected to pay all their own costs, while road users aren’t.

The other problem is that there are powerful pro-road and car lobbies. It’s well documented that the old streetcar systems in America were dismantled largely because GM engaged in a massive political influence campaign to have them dismantled.

In any case, mass use of cars is something else that will be going away over the next fifty years as civilization collapse and climate change hit, and hit hard. We aren’t going to be able to afford such nonsense. There will still be cars, for sure, but the idea that every family should have one will end.

And like many of the things that are going to go away, this will be good for us, it’s just that like any bad-for-you addiction the ideal is to slowly titrate off, not cold-turkey.

Those cities and states which get ahead of this and make changes now and over the next decade or two will be far better off than those who pretend it will never happen.

Culture War Outrage BS At The Olympics

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On July 29, 2024

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Outrage, like all emotions, has its time and place. One should, for example, be outraged at a genocide.

Outrage is a powerful emotion and engaging people’s emotions can provide wealth, fame, clicks and even power. Which brings us to the “last supper” Olympics outrage bullshit.

This is not the Last Supper, and only a cultural illiterate and dribbling moron would think so:

The second I saw this I thought “Dionysius.” If you don’t know, that was the Greek God of wine, revelry, dance and, in effect, partying hard. Dionysius was also the particular patron on Athenian theater.

The Olympics are a form of theater, though the God most associated with the original Olympics was Zeus and his son Heracles (Herculues) supposedly started the Olympics.

One of the most amusing things about right wing culture warriors is their embrace of the Bronze and Classical Age. Though there was an ascetic impulse, epitomized prominently by the the Romans Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger, the Dionysian tradition of revelry: meaning feasting, drinking, wild sex and, yes, partying damn hard, was also a part of the classical heritage, and often far more popular.

Oh and that wild sex definitely included same sex partners. The greatest poet of the classical era was Sappho, who gloried in lesbian love and male homosexuality and what we would consider pederasty was common.

The Christian impulse to despise the Dionysian makes too many blind to the real nature of the Classical world: for every dour Stoic or rigid philosopher there was a reveler who loved Dionysius for creating the pleasures of human life.

Since the West, and especially the conservative West considers its wellspring; it’s first great impulse, to have been in Ancient Greece, anyone denying the Dionysian impulse, or unable to recognize it, is a Philistine.

As for outrage, there’s nothing to see here but the French being French. People who were upset with this are either stupid and uneducated or deliberately goading others into outrage over a deliberate misunderstanding.

Long may Dionysius’s influence reign: feasting, theatre, dance, and partying are part of the human experience. Simply be aware that Dionysius often goes to excess and that you aren’t a God, capable of partying hard twenty-four-seven.

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The Role of Character and Ideology in Prosperity

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On May 20, 2024

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(First of two collections of important articles published 2014 or earlier. )

I want to take readers through some of my previous writing on ideology and character, and how they help form the societies in which we live. Taking the time to read these articles (a short book’s worth), should vastly improve your understanding of the world and the articles to come. It should be worth your time, even if you read the articles when they were previously published, as, at the time, they lacked both context and commentary, and were not collated to be read together so that the connections were obvious.

(I have a lot of new readers, so I’m going to republish this. These are some of the most important articles I have written–Ian)

Baseline Predictions for the Next 60 Years

While not an article about ideology, the above is an article about where our current ideology and character are going to take us: To the brink of disaster and possibly beyond, while continuing to impoverish and disempower larger and larger segments of the human race. This might be a slightly optimistic piece; there’s some reason to believe our actions in the world’s oceans could destroy the oxygen cycle, and if this is so, events will be much, much worse.

What Is an Ideology and Why Do We Need a New One?

Too many people think ideologies are some airy-fairy nonsense, while they themselves are “pragmatic” men and women operating on common sense and facts. Such people are amongst the greatest of all fools: Our entire society is based on interlocking ideologies; the primary of which are neoliberalism, capitalism, human rights, and socialism. It is not obvious, nor was it obvious to most societies that have ever existed, for example, that food should be distributed based on money, nor that ideas could be property. How we organize things, our particular ideas about markets and their role, and our ideas about who should lead us, are ideological. If we want to change society, we need to be able to control markets so they aren’t producing a world that makes us sick, unhappy, and, in increasing numbers, dead.

How to Create a Viable Ideology We may look at current trends and realize that if we don’t reverse them–and reverse them fast–billions will suffer or die; but creating an ideology which can reverse these trends requires us to understand what makes an ideology viable and powerful. An ideology which does not create believers willing to die, and to kill, on its behalf, will lose to those that do. An ideology which cannot prevent people from selling out, from betraying, will definitely lose in the current world, where there is so much money available at the top to simply buy out (for billions) those who create something new, so that anything new can be neutralized into nothing but a monetization scheme.

Our Theory of Human Nature Predicts Our Policies

The ideas of an ideology determine how our society is run, and, of those ideas, none is more important than what we make of human nature.

A Theory of Human Nature Suited to Prosperity and Freedom

If we are trying to create a prosperous, free world, our policies must be based in a theory of human nature that is both true (enough) and which leads to policies that create widespread affluence and human freedom.

Character Is Destiny

Ideology and character are intertwined. Character determines what we do, what we don’t do, and how we do it. The character of large numbers of people determines the destinies of nations and of the world itself. If we want to make the world better (or worse), we must change our own characters. Those who fail to understand how character is created (and changed) will never change the world–except accidentally.

How Everyday Life Creates Our Character

Along with, as noted, our destiny. I always laugh at radicals who want more schooling, because schooling is where people learn to sit down, shut up, give the approved answers, and do what they’re told. Working life, as an adult, continues this process of learned powerlessness and acquiescence, and even in our consumptive and political lives we continue the trend; choosing from the choices offered, rather than producing what we actually need for ourselves.

How Everyday Life Creates Sociopathic Corporate Leaders

Those who lead our corporations control most of our lives, even more so than the government, because they set the terms by which we live, die, and can afford the good things in life. Our daily lives are prescribed by these people, from how we work to what we eat, to what we entertain ourselves with. We need, therefore, to understand the character traits for which our leaders are chosen, and how the process of choosing works. If we can’t learn to create and choose better leaders, we will never have a better world.

The Difference Between Ethics and Morals

If we want an ideology that tells us how to create both a better world and the people with the character to create that world, we must understand what sort of people they should be. To accomplish this, we must first understand how they treat other people–the people they know, and more importantly, the people they don’t.

The Fundamental Feedback Loop for a Better World

The shortest article on this list, this is also one of the most important and speaks directly to how money directs behaviour and how that directs our choice in leaders.

Living in a Rich Society

It’s been so long since parts of the West were truly prosperous that people have forgotten what it’s like, and they’ve forgotten that it creates a different type of person than a scarcity society.

Late 19th and Early 20th Century Intellectual Roots

Lived experience creates character and character feeds into ideology. It’s worth looking at how various themes of the Victorian era were created by those who lived through that time and the time that came before it.

What Confucius Teaches Those Who Want a Better World

Amongst those who have created powerful ideologies, Confucius is in the first rank; Confucianism has been the most important ideology of the most populous and advanced region of the world for most of the last two thousand years–or more. Confucius was very aware of what he was trying to do, had a theory of human nature, and a theory of character. We would be fools not to learn from him.

Concluding Remarks

I hope that those who are interested in creating a better world will read the articles linked above. What I’ve written amounts to a short book, and the ideas are interrelated. If you have read a few of my posts, or even read all of them, but not thought of or read them with each other in mind, you cannot have the full picture of how these ideas work together, and why the different parts are necessary.

Ideas are often destroyed in practice by those who do not understand the reasons for the various pieces of the puzzle and prescriptions. These people feel they can pick and choose without that understanding. Character and ideology and ethics and every day life are all intertwined; you cannot pick one and say,”This is supreme.” They create each other.

Of course, the above is not a complete intellectual package. Large chunks are missing. My next piece will be a review of some key economic articles, specifically concerning why the world is as it is today: Why we lost post-war liberalism, why we have austerity and neoliberalism and so-called free trade. That piece comes after this one because without understanding our own characters, the characters of our leaders, and how ideology works, we cannot understand our current circumstances.

I will then be moving on to new articles that focus on technology, geography, the environment, and their effect on societies though the ages, with an emphasis on those technologies and environments which create prosperity, freedom, and egalitarian cultures and explore why they do so. There is an important trend today, an argument, about changing our technology to improve society, but it will only work if we understand how technology changes society.

Originally published Oct 2, 2014.  Republished July 28, 2015, March 6, 2016, October 2, 2017 & May 20, 2024.

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The Retard Parade of Western Politics Exemplified By Trump and Biden

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On May 1, 2024

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We had a joke back in the Bush Jr. administration.

“Evil or stupid? Why not both?”

Bush Jr. was clearly mentally challenged. Cheney was supposedly smart, but he was the type of smart guy who winds up ordering the charge of the Light Brigade: great at internal politics, worthless at anything else.

Biden’s clearly senile (no, don’t even). Trump’s somewhat better, but still makes mistakes frequently and is often incoherent.. We used to sneer at the Soviet politburo of the 70s and 80s, but this worse.

But it’s not just about age. Macron is relatively young and a complete cockup, residing over a France which is constantly rioting. He’s gotten France kicked out of multiple African ex-colonies and proposes idiocy like sending the French Army to Ukraine. The German leadership are spinless morons who are shedding German industry because they won’t stand up to America, losing an advantage created by better men and women over a hundred years ago.

American policy forced Russia, which wanted to be part of the West, into a solid alliance with China, making China’s rise inevitable. The West deliberately sent China our industrial base, thus destroying the basis of our power.

We’re so incapable now that we cant even keep Yemen from shutting down shipping in one of the most important straits in the world. Drone tech should NEVER have been developed by the US military, because it was obviously a tech like gunpowder or the crossbow: it empowers any idiot to defeat extremely expensive military units and that’s what the US has an advantage in. It doesn’t have anything else: its soldiers are not, and never have been very good, just well equipped and numerous.

And then there’s climate change. “There’s a threat we know will probably end our civilization, but fuck it, let’s make it worse!”

This is true late Roman Emperor level dysfunction. Absolute morons getting everything wrong, capable of nothing but alternating between pandering to elites and making cruel shows of ineffective force, while the fall everyone with sense knows is coming storms forward from the horizon.

Of course, they do live in a world where they fuck underage girls and boys, grow bloated on bribes and pat each other on the back telling themselves that they are the greatest great leading the most powerful power that every strode the world. Trump shits into a golden toilet.

But this Emperor’s New Clothes crap. They’re idiots. They’re evil. And they’re presiding over the end of the European era and the induction of catastrophic climate change and ecological collapse while getting their asses repeatedly kicked by a bunch of tribesmen.

Pathetic.

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The Lessons Of Jesus (Or “Why Conservatives Hate Francis”)

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On March 28, 2024

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As Easter approaches, let us consider Pope Francis.

https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/1771152349698142589

The difference between Francis and his critics isn’t as wide as some people make out, and he’s far less unorthodox than his enemies claim, but this is the difference: Francis wants to welcome people, and believes in a God whose primary trait is love, while Church conservatives want to exclude people.

The greatest controversy of Francis’s pontificate has been his allowing blessings for same sex couples. He doesn’t allow marriage, and no priest has to bless a homoxexual couple, but they are now allowed to. In Africa, most of which is virulently and culturally anti-gray, this has gone down badly even with those on the left of the Church, but outside African, it’s been a theological issue. The Church teaches homosexuality is a sin and no grace can be given to homosexual couples.

Anyone who knows the church finds this ironic and funny, given that the priesthood and the bureaucracy couldn’t run without closeted gays.

The larger issue, though, is that just as Jesus spent time with tax collectors, prostitutes and other low-lifes, and believed it was almost impossible for the rich to enter heaven, Francis believes the Church should reach out to sinners, treat them kindly and even love them, as Jesus loved humanity, despite our sins.

The example of Jesus, as displayed in the Gospels, is that of love for the unworthy. His contempt is for the empty ritualists, the Pharisees, and the greedy, but even they are invited to join Jesus on the path to God. But, of all the sins he took time to condemn, Jesus himself never spoke of homosexuality.

I’m not, overall, a fan of Christianity. I’m with Gore Vidal, who said that monotheism was the worst thing to befall the West. Christianity and Islam’s records are of vast violence and coercion and horrific crimes.

But there is a good side to Christianity, a tendency to love and acceptance and care for the poor and the weak which comes directly from the Gospels, and that care tends to be show much more in the better offshoots of Catholicism than in most Protestant denominations, tainted as they are by ideas of predestination and/or salvation by faith alone. When Henry the Eighth forcibly shut the monasteries one claim was that they didn’t help the poor enough, but the new Anglican church did even less.

Francis is the only Pope of my life who I regard as Christian: as following the the example of Jesus, even if very imperfectly. The others were orthodox inquisitors, feeling that rules were more important than love and charity.

I rather doubt that either Benedict or John Paul II will like their reception, should Jesus and Heaven exist:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

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Your Greatest Enjoyment

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On January 25, 2024

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A few memories stand out for me:

Age 5 or so, on the beach, kneeling on a rocky granite outcropping. The tide is out, and the rock has many small basins still full of water. In one of them a few small fish, silver and a sort of reddish gold, swim in circles. I stare, fascinated.

A tiny room in the third story of an old house. The woman I’m in love with, a psychology major, is doing her her homework, sprawled on her bed. I’m tucked into an alcove, knees up against my chest, reading a book. We aren’t talking or touching, but I’m warm in a cold room, my eyes are soft, and both of us are perfectly aware of the other.

I’m eighteen, running on 4th Avenue. The sun is shining, people are out shopping. I zip past a mirrored wall and turn my head to watch myself run. My form is flawless: my knees come up parallel to the ground, I’m running about a five minute mile, almost effortlessly, muscles warm and relaxed. I’ve done about eight miles; two to go. Sweet.

Now, or in the past, what have you enjoyed most? Write in comments, or email me if you don’t want to share widely.

 

Hate, Anger, Contempt And Our Leadership

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On November 6, 2023

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Yesterday I wrote a very angry article about the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza, with the full aid and complicity of most Western nations, including the US and my own country, Canada.

As I noted in comments, it’s the angriest I’ve been since 2015 when Syriza crumbled to European austerity. The day that happened I was furious. I wrote an angry post and went for a walk, still boiling with anger. About half an hour later I thought “this is ridiculous, it isn’t helping the Greeks and I don’t like it” and the anger went away.

It was odd, in the sense that we often have thoughts and feelings we don’t like, but usually they don’t go away just because think “I’d rather not feel this way.”

But a fair bit of it stuck, and over the past eight years my anger has reduced radically, and on those occasions when I do get angry, I can end it quickly if I want to. I was angry when I wrote that post, but I didn’t go to bed angry.

From about the run-up to the Iraq war till 2014 I was angry most of the time. Lots of dead people, tortured people, raped people, hungry people, homeless people that didn’t need to be any of those things.

Our leaders and too many of us (remember approval for the Iraq war polled over 70%) were creating Hell when we could just as easily create Heaven.

In many ways the current Gaza war reminds me of the run-up to and early Iraq war. The same feeling of frustrated helplessness while vast evil was planned and performed. Iraq didn’t radicalize me, Obama confirming he was neoliberal scum and condemning a billion+ people to die by slamming the pedal down on climate change did, but Iraq turned me into an activist, a role I occupied from 2002 to 2009, and emotionally inhabited till 2014.

Anyway, what I learned in 2014, and what I grounded into my consciousness in 2015 was that being angry all the time was destroying me. My health, my effectiveness and my enjoyment of life. My anger wasn’t hurting the people doing all the evil, they could care less, and why should they care, they were well off or rich, powerful and living very pleasant lives while I was poor, sick and angry?

The only person my anger was hurting was me.

Don’t get me wrong, if my anger had let me, in some sense, win, I’d have taken the hit. I was committed, oh was I committed. But it didn’t work.

Andrew Cockburn once asked someone working for him if their hate was pure and I get it. Still is. I won’t pretend or cavil, or pretend to be a Saint. I hate Obama. I hate Biden. I hate Trump. I hate Clinton and Bush. Netanyahu. Didn’t use to hate Trudeau but genocide support has pushed me over.

My hate is pure, but these days not intense. Just a sort of background contempt (the most dangerous emotion, by far, contempt.)

At the same time I feel this odd empathy and sympathy for them. I get it, I feel it, the self-righteousness (especially evident in Obama and Trudeau), the love of power and adulation, the sense that they are the ones who know and make the hard decisions and so on.

Ben Gurion knew he was evil, and I respect him for that, but most of our leaders think they are good.

(And no, don’t succumb to the bullshit of “well if I think they’re evil, and they think they’re good, who knows who’s right. That’s garbage. Have you aided a genocide recently? Invaded a country based on lies? Denied the children of Iraq cancer medicines? Bombed a hospital or pharmaceutical plant? Made millions homeless then effectively made being homeless illegal?” )

Life is good for the people in charge: the senior pols, the CEOS, the high level executives, the tools who run NGOs (whose workers lives are mostly shit).

Anyway, I write this because I bet a lot of my readers feel the same way, and recognize a lot of what I’m saying.

Rule : don’t let the monsters ruin your life. Don’t let them control your emotions. Surges of anger are fine, but don’t live there. Seek out joy and happiness and as much as possible fight from there.

But remember also that emotions like hate, anger and contempt, in controlled doses exist to let you know who is an enemy, who shouldn’t have power, and who is dangerous to you. Such emotions are dangerous, absolutely, because they can be weaponized by others to turn you against people who don’t deserve them. See Jews, WWII and Palestinians, today. See Americans who think Putin is a bigger threat to them than Biden or Trump or the CEO of any Fortune 500 company.

What’s happening in Gaza is an atrocity. By all means do something, but don’t let it make your miserable, because if you do, the bastards have a victory, the suffering of their enemy, you.

But remember, oh yes, always remember. And remembering, act if you ever have the chance.

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