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| Sunday, 1 August 2004 |
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Magic to make people shrink by Wendell W. Solomons On Friday July 23rd, 2004, Sri Lanka's President observed: "... If all of us can collectively put behind us all the little pettiness that has bound us in shackles, free ourselves from those many and numerous hatreds, jealousies, that make of us little men and women..." * * * A method to make people shrink was proposed for Britain by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Hobbes suggested that inciting in the nation 'a war of each against the other' would promote bickering in the population and thereby allow the ruler easy dominance. Hobbes was proposing that a population whose behaviour was shifted towards dispute and contention could not possibly unite against the ruler. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) meant to popularise a related approach in his book "Robinson Crusoe" suggesting that a man could still live handsomely, if alone on an island. On the other hand, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) saw that folly lurked within. He satirised it in "Gulliver in Lilliput", an account of a big man among little people. These two books even entered schools. British statesmen decided that Thomas Hobbes' approach of 'a war of each against the other' would undermine social unity and cohesiveness and interfere with the capacity of people to work together. Synergy would be hampered in Britain and therefore, national productivity lost. They took a stand for amity in the nation. Britain's pathway to establishing itself in the 19th Century as 'manufactory to the world' began with children in secondary school. All manner of sports were observed, codified and promoted in school to accentuate amity and cooperation (lawn tennis was adopted from players in nearby France but the game of polo was adopted from as far afield as Asia.). On the role of schools, it is interesting that the English saying goes, 'Battles are won in the playing fields of Eton 'Divide and Rule' is at least as old as 300 BC multi-volume 'Arthaastra', attributed to Mauryan councillor Kautila. Though often using that strategy to acquire colonies many times its own size, British statecraft transcended the strategy in consolidating its subject nations. The numerous green playing fields you see in Sri Lanka's main cities bear witness to this concept being used in their statecraft. * * * Yet, the tables were turned full circle in our times and community dissolution has replaced consolidation. What happened in the USA now affects many nations. In 1976, a man named Milton Friedman entered the U.S. administration with the entourage of President Ronald Reagan. Friedman had tried previously to enter with Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater but journalists unearthed Goldwater's links with Gus Greenbaum, a member of the Stardust mob of Las Vegas. Upon entering the US administration with President Reagan, after a 12-year wait Milton Friedman lost no time in unfolding his blueprint for economic policy. His blueprint was so distant from what was then acceptable that it earned in the U.S. the title 'Voodoo Economics.' Plunging on, however, Friedman co-authored a book with his wife, "Free to Choose." The book was turned into a video series for world TV, which might not have happened so easily had Friedman not parked himself in the high position of Economics Advisor to the U.S. President. As his blueprint was pushed towards the summit of university theory, Friedman's strategy was pointed out as the way to go by Western TV. TV presenters made 'reforms' synonymous with programming a man as an independent Robinson Crusoe, 'Free to Choose' whether rich or poor in a world of free producers and buyers. In 1977, Sri Lanka was yoked to the blueprint now labelled 'Open Economy'. The country's subsequent exposure to cartels and advanced producers crushed its nascent enterprises such as the assembly of FIAT and MAZDA automobiles (it had begun car assembly before Korea or Malaysia). Sri Lanka became dependent on foreign loans, which was the hook inside Friedman's bait. In this respect Friedman emerges as a salesman of finance capital. After the working out of Friedman's 'Open Economy' during 27 years, Sri Lanka today is applying to its neighbour India for bailing out. India had chosen the path of protecting the development of its domestic production and its foreign exchange resources now exceeds $ 100 billion. Recently, PM Mahinda Rajapakse made this comment: "Our views... are drawn from the structural realities of the world in which we live: A world, which has shown us, time and time again, that the fundamentals of liberal economics are unreal and untrue. Perfect competition is a myth and not a reality. The perfect market is a dream that will never come true.' The myth had to be sugar-coated to penetrate our defences and destroy social cohesiveness. The study of how Lilliputians small men and women are made isn't complete without a reference to Alice Rosenbaum, Milton Friedman's associate and mentor. Born in 1906 in Petrograd she emigrated to the U.S. in 1926. Innocent of the safety precautions that British statecraft had employed, she put out her versions of the philosophy of nihilist intellectuals such as Russian writer Nikolai Dobrolyubov (the term itself was first circulated by Ivan Turgenev's novel 'Fathers and Sons.') Writing under the assumed name of Ayn Rand, she supported the inversion of social obligations and ties to nothing ('nihil'.) Alice Rosenbaum's way of destroying social cohesiveness and shrinking us to contentious, bickering rabble was to trap us with self-deification. This vanity trap suggests that I can do no wrong since I am infallible. If I drop a cup, the other man has distracted me. If everyone drops cups that worry me little because I am invincible after all. Alice Rosenbaum became the seductress whose magic rules the world of network TV today. We can encapsulate her mantra for making little men and women. She scripted it for us in 1938 in her book 'Anthem': "And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: I." |
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