World between orders : Inequality, Conflicts and Life

  "Just as one bird does not make a flock, nor one day a season, so one action or a short time cannot make us happy." - Aristotle

THE Horn of Africa, a region also known as the Somali peninsula lies on the crossroads of Red sea, Gulf of Aden and Arabian sea. The region, once known for their notorious piracy activity on sea is now facing its worst draught in 40 years. A quick internet search will reveal some heart-shattering images of both people and animals lying dead on the ground and their bodies decaying under the open sky. The reason for their death - scarcity of two bare necessities required for survival i.e. food and water.  It is a real tragedy that the West, who also happen to be the self-acclaimed champions of human rights are ignorant as they continue to remain in bed with Ukraine and are seen to be making bold claims of standing up for human rights and against the tyranny of Russians. While the people in Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia are paying with their lives in trying to stand up against the tyranny of nature. They are preparing themselves for a famine, induced by climate change. But, sadly enough, on one hand we see the two faced collective consciousness of west busy in securing their oil and gas supply from Russia and on the other side condemning the same Russia, for lack of options, with - words and sanctions. 

The latest World Inequality Report indicates there are no signs of slowing down the ever widening gap in wealth between the rich and the poor. While the poorest 50% own just 2% of the global wealth, the richest 10% own 76% of all the wealth. This phenomenon is not just true for rich and poor people but also true in case of rich and poor nation states. In words of Plato, "State is individual writ large." He thus equated individual and state and implied that state alone is nothing without individuals. Inequality per se isn't something new, infact inequality in a literal sense is natural and found everywhere. A natural question that pops up is that if inequality is as old as life on Earth, why is there a need to revisit it? In the post cold war era, democracy became the preferred choice of governance method employed by most countries, especially in the west. Most commonly understood definition of democracy is of a government that is by the people, for the people, of the people(Thank Abraham Lincoln for the memorable phrase). The study on inequality is important because in most democracies, the wealthy can, and as a matter of fact do, transform their economic power into political power, and therefore, the higher the inequality, the greater the likelihood that an affluent minority in the country could end up determining the fate of the majority in the country. This subsequently gets replicated in international institutions such as UN, WHO, WTO instilled with responsibility to uphold the liberal world order, trade and other relations among nations and ensuring rights and well being of humanity.

Foreign policy of any sovereign nation has one sole purpose - maximising the fulfilment of its core national interests and minimising any risk to the same. However, in a unipolar world, that came into being after the defeat of Soviet Union in cold war. The economy of democracies around the world were opened up in the name of liberalisation and they were interwoven together. To cement this interdependence, new institutions like WTO were set up and the existing institutions were strengthened with more charters and treaties of binding nature. Goal of this entire exercise was not to make the world a much better or an equitable place. The goal was simple. To use all these state actors to align with USA, both in socio-political and economic thought as well as deeds, in order ensure continuation of US hegemony. Thomas Friedman was so confident about this interdependence that he claimed in his 'Golden Arches Theory' that if two nations have McDonald's outlet, they will not go to war with each other. The US hegemony is a mighty force, especially in a world where wars are fought on an ideological level rather than on ground with guns and soldiers. An estimate of this hegemony can be observed in Vietnam War where the Vietnamese fought Americans while wearing Made in America jeans and singing hollywood songs.  The experiment of European Union further cemented this idea that a bunch of nation states could come together and surrender their sovereignty to form a supranational state and become a formidable economic power. In what is called complex interdependence today. The weak and poor democracies are attached so close to this liberal world order that their sovereignty is almost non-existent. They are made to act in unison and follow what the west and primarily United States wants them to follow. 

With inequality comes polarisation, a constant tussle between the haves and have not. Just like economy, our societies too go through a cycle of boom and bust. Prosperity is followed by inflation and increased concentration of wealth followed by economic slowdown. The roaring 20's were followed by great depression. New liberal economic order was followed by the economic crisis of 2008 and the present economic slowdown was imminent even before the pandemic triggered by COVID-19 became a buzz word. The new industrial revolution is powered by artificial intelligence and spread of internet. It has increased the demand for highly skilled labour and at the same time automation has made most of the medium and low skilled jobs redundant. This is a dual crisis for developing economies like India. We have a large pool of youth who are simply not skilled enough to fulfill the requirements of new A.I. led industries. Rising underemployment and unemployment is a harsh reality not just in the third world but is also being witnessed in countries like Italy and Greece. Most of the developing nations are not equipped to upskill their youth. This results in more migration by those who seek better opportunities of work and education. But migration isn't cheap. We see that majority of student migration and migration seeking high end jobs and better economic prospects is undertaken by people who are already better placed in society. The increasing gap is so big that middle class is no longer seen as a relevant socio-economic classification in societies. One is either a high class citizen or a low class, there is no in between. 

Rise of right wing politics and nationalism is a by product of globalisation and its failures. This change began gradually with the onset of globalisation and the huge interchange of ideas between people of various culture and  societies. Spread of english ensured that language was no longer a barrier to communication, nor was geography of any significance in keeping people and cultures apart. As technology kept improving we witnessed a new class of citizen - the global citizen, someone who was truly cosmopolitan, with increased people to people contacts and migration, this idea of being a global citizen has now spread everywhere. Our new jobs made us move out of our native place and people started to settle in mega cities that became a true melting pot of cultures. Moving to the comfort of metro cities and the booming service sector powered by internet was initially welcomed by all, young population dreamt of living the metro life because it gave them freedom, economic prosperity and a sense of accomplishment. Just like two sides of a coin, this new change in society too had a second side as highlighted by the new emerging identity crisis.

Man is a social animal. But the global citizen is forced to embrace solitude. People are staying away from their families, they spend their time watching Korean drama and more often than not engage in futile discourses just to seek a sense of belonging. The global citizen is more lonely than any isolated tribe living in Sub Saharan Africa. Relationships have become transactional and the abundance of choices provided in form of products/services by capitalists have made us greedy and self centered. We now find ourselves in a post truth world where there are no shared values and opinions that people agree upon. When people are so confused and divided among themselves it becomes easy to manipulate them. People, especially the youth are seeking to understand where they belong and to find their identity and some commonly agreed upon shared values. They now find themselves going back to religion. Political parties understand this and they have exploited this to increase their voter base. People too seem to care more about their religion and regain the lost identity than any government policies. Perhaps they find political manifestos boring and choose a new 'Netflix Special' over a document that is going to impact their future . All thanks to the attention based economy of social media and OTT platforms, changing the way someone thinks was never this easy. More and more political parties are now engineering their support base with propaganda in form of digital and written content. Social media has already hooked people and put them into echo chambers of their own liking. This is a disaster.

Change is inevitable. Only time knows if the change is for good or bad. But not everything can be left for future. We need to rethink our lives and take a pause from this fast paced lifestyle. Just taking some moment to introspect, to have a look inside and find ourselves would go a long way. Instead of reacting to every little sensory craving we should train ourselves to control those impulses. It is surprising how unremarkable todays youth is. They have become consumers of passive entertainment. We must seek active entertainment. Internet is passive entertainment. In passive entertainment, we lose time, energy and resources. But in active, we invest those to better ourselves. In passive entertainment, we are consumers. But in active, we can be a producer or creator.

Entertainment is good but gaining something out of it is even better. Nietzsche says that before acting one way or another one should ask if they'd be okay doing this forever, if the answer is no, one must contemplate and do things differently. We must seek to establish our own original personalities. Diversity is good. If all the monuments around us were 'Taj Mahal' they wouldn't be so special. No one likes a bunch of people who have borrowed personalities and thoughts just because they saw their favorite superhero do that. Idol worshipping and blind fan following has done us more harm than good. As humans we have the gift of speech and ability to write and convey our thoughts. It would be a real waste of life if we spend it apathetically without forming strong ideals and belief structure on our own. We are dealt with some cards when we begin our lives, some find their hands are better than others, for some the cards are not so good. We have only one life and we cannot fold, we must continue the game. We must seek improvement and work to eliminate our weaknesses, for it is a long game and the show must go on.