How the New World Order is taking over: Part II

How the New World Order is coming in: Part II

The Machine Stops, is shortly to be available in audio form. Written over a century ago, it is an amazingly accurate prediction of our present predicament. The unthinking use of the new technologies of electronic communications could not, however, succeed in cock-up fashion without the development of some centralised system of control over social interaction. In E.M. Forster’s story, the Committee of the Machine determines policy and administration, keeping people in line with those policies – purely for their own good. In their very different ways, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 demonstrate the potential for centralised power to operate through psychological manipulation and terror. As Chris Hedges has demonstrated, the nightmare dystopias of the twentieth century are emerging as twenty-first century reality.

But what are the alternatives?  

Two essentials:

First, it is essential that the group shall have no conscriptive power over the

individual; i.e., the individual must have the power to contract-out of any group in society. Central to civil rights is the ability to contract out of waged or salaried slavery.  

Self-Employing Centers

The remedy for unemployment

is employment,

and there is no better employment

than self-employment.

Self-Employing Centers

are small shops

where repairs can be made

and workers can be found

to do work outside.

With the Self-Employing

Centers

could be connected Houses

of Hospitality where the

self-employing workers

could find shelter. This

complicated world is too

complicated to be dealt with

in an efficient manner by

specialized technicians.

Specialized technicians

knowing more and more

about less and less do not

know , how to simplify a

complicated world. We need

fewer specialists and more

encyclopedists, fewer

masters of one trade and

more jacks-of-all trades.

Peter Maurin

Catholic Radicalism (1949)

NOTE: This book is available to be downloaded from the internet, but I have failed to make the link work on this blog.

Second, maximum decentralisation of initiative is essential for human welfare. This is not devolution of power from a central power to the people living and working locally. On the contrary, it is a taking back of power over decision-making by the people creating and consuming the goods and services at local level.  

Cult, Culture, and Cultivation

When the Irish scholars

decided to lay the foundations

of medieval Europe,

they established:

Centers of Thought

in all the cities of Europe

as far as Constantinople,

where people

could look for thought

so they could have light.

Houses of Hospitality

where Christian charity

were exemplified.

Agricultural Centers

where they combined

(a) Cult—

that is to say Liturgy

(b) with Culture

that is to say Literature

(c) with Cultivation—

that is to say Agriculture. "

Peter Maurin

Catholic Radicalism

The origins and implications of these quotations will be explored in the course of this series of blog entries.