Has the Crash Arrived?
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 23 Mar 2020
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service
19 Mar 2020 – The headlines provide abundant details about economic shutdowns in order to slow the spread of the COV-19 virus.
But behind the headlines, there is another story more important in the long run: the global economy is a house of cards based on speculation and military spending. It seems likely that the house of cards will come crashing down as a result of the global economic shutdown.
The details of how this will come about in economic terms are difficult to predict since there are so many interacting factors.
But even more important is how this can play out in political repercussions and opportunities.
Will it provide us with the opportunity to make the transition from the culture of war to a culture of peace?
In the novella that I wrote ten years ago, I foresaw a global economic crash in the year 2020, which opened the possibility for this radical transformation.
Ultimately the result depends on our coordinated strategy and tactics, but it also depends on having the necessary communication and transportation mechanisms that allow our coordination and our actions.
Will we be able to travel and meet face to face? Already there are are severe travel restructions. In the novella I wrote: “Don’t forget that in 2021, airline flights around the world were running at less than 30% of pre-crash levels, and to get a ticket under ordinary circumstances you needed to reserve six months in advance and hope that the airline would stay in business that long. “
Can we depend on internet communications as the crash develops? In the novella, I predict that internet communication will also be curtailed, and I propose that alternative electronic communication will fill the void. I am not an expert in this domain, but perhaps some who read this blog may send me suggestions.
In the novella I considered that in the first few years after the global economic crash, the priority was to mobilize millions of people to resist the attempts by the rich to impose a “fascist solution” like that imposed last century in the Great Depression. I think this priority is appropriate today, since already in recent years we are seeing signs of this danger with the rise to power of authoritarian heads of state such as Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Erdogan and Orban, not to mention the moves of Putin and Xi Jinping to retain power without elections.
The turning point, according to the novella, was the declaration by representatives from cities around the world meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil:
When in the course of history it becomes evident that the old order has failed and it becomes possible through the development and sharing of a new vision that power be transferred from the nation-state with its culture of war to a new order based on the culture of peace, it is the right and duty of those who have been elected to represent the
people on the local and regional level to take up the higher responsibility of world governance.
Readers of this blog will recognize here the proposal in last month’s blog for a Mayor’s Security Council.
I don’t know if it will be in Porto Alegre, but Latin America seems a logical place to start the process towards a new world order. After all, it was the World Social Forums born in Brazil that gave us our slogan: “Another world is possible.”
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Dr. David Adams is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the UN International Year for the Culture of Peace. Previously, at Yale and Wesleyan Universities, he was a specialist on the brain mechanisms of aggressive behavior, the history of the culture of war, and the psychology of peace activists, and he helped to develop and publicize the Seville Statement on Violence. Send him an email.
Go to Original – decade-culture-of-peace.org
Tags: COVID-19, Coronavirus, Economy, Military Industrial Complex, War Economy
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