Not Holiday Reading

          Anger, outrage and frustration – these have been my overweening feelings these past few days. So, what happened to make me feel this way? Well, I did get a letter informing me of a fine for an “alleged bus lane contravention”, but that provoked only a fleeting outburst of incredulity. (It was, after all, a fair cop.) No, what is really upsetting me is nothing less than the state the world.

          I take in the news and despair: Lebanon turned into a failed state by its corrupt, incompetent and uncaring government; citizens  of Belarus, Zimbabwe and even the USA battered by “security” forces just for voicing alternative opinions; populist bullies in India, Poland, Hungary, Egypt and Brazil turning inclusive societies into exclusive clubs; and the CCP enforcing its will on everyone within its ambit, while intent on obliterating all cultures that are perceived as a threat to the dominance of Han Chinese. And those are just the high-profile items. Add in the constant stream of stories about human rights violations and the constant degradation of our biosphere and you have to ask what hope there is for the health, wealth, happiness and freedom of the majority of this planet’s population.

          Well, there was at least one good news story this week: the UK’s GDP is down by twenty percent. Of course, this was not presented as good news because it goes against the grain of accepted economic wisdom, which is that constant economic growth – regardless of its real cost – is desirable and that the international league table of ‘successful’ national economies depends upon this crude statistic as a measure of ‘progress’. Which brings me to the main cause of my current state of despair, the books I am reading.

          The Finance Curse (Nicholas Shaxon) is a convincing account of how our economies, especially those of the USA and the UK, are being destroyed by the dominance of their financial sectors which, although they are counted into the calculations for GDP, are actually there under false pretences. The financial sector does not create wealth, it extracts it. In fact, it goes deeper than that – it destroys real wealth-creating activity by smothering it at birth and “financialising” every asset within its grasp.

          Doughnut Economics (Kate Raworth) analyses the accepted principles upon which economic policies are based and rejects them as counterproductive and destructive. Better still, it proposes an alternative path, one which is feasible, beneficial to the majority, not just the elites and, furthermore, is sustainable, i.e. rooted in the fact that the planet’s resources are finite.

          Shikasta (Doris Lessing) is perhaps the most depressing of these three books, which is ironic since I chose it as a light-hearted distraction from Economics. Although it is counted in the sci-fi genre and was published in 1979, its theme is prescient. The author imagines galaxies inhabited by other civilizations, one of which created humanity as an experiment (it’s a variant of the god theory) and has been monitoring the progress of its progeny ever since. I am only partway through this story but, thus far, there is no sign of a happy ending. Its moral appears to be that we human beings are a failed experiment, uniquely capable of screwing up what was a wonderful opportunity to live happily on a perfect planet. Neither a god nor a superior race from another galaxy is about to rescue us.

          These books illustrate the harms we are doing to ourselves and the planet in pursuit of more – more power, more money and more resources – all increasingly concentrated into fewer hands, despite a growing population. Perhaps I should lighten up my reading list with frothy novels, but that would be a temporary fix. Burying one’s head in the sand works only for a while.