RSA ANIMATE: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

I want to develop a very simple linear line of thought about one point why in our economy clarity is no longer Jassim idiosyncrasy of some good guys here and there but the basic constituent of our economy I would like to start with the feature of so-called cultural capital capitalism today's form of capitalism and then develop how the same thing think applies also to economy in the narrower sense of the term namely if in the old times by all times I mean something very precise before this sixty-eight transformation of capitalism into as we usually call it

more cultural capitalism postmodern caring for ecology and all that what changed what change is that if before this time there was a simple model a simple opposition between here its consummation you buy you speculate and so on then on the top of it it comes what you do for a society like like Suraj he still the old type here I claim in the morning he grabs the money if I simplified in the afternoon he gives half of the money back to charities and supporting think and so on but I claim in today's capitalism more and

more the tendency is to bring the two dimensions together in one of an the same cluster so that when you buy something your anti-consumer is duty to do something for others for environment and so on is already included into it if you think I'm exaggerating you have them around the corner walk into any Starbucks coffee and you will see how they explicitly tell you I quote their campaign it's not just what you are buying it's what you are buying and then they describe it to you listen when you buy Starbucks whether you realize it or

not you are buying buying into something bigger than a cup of coffee you are buying into a coffee Attucks through our Starbucks shared planet program we purchase more Fairtrade coffee than any company in the world ensuring that the farmers who grow the beans receive a fair price for the hard work and we invest in an improved coffee growing practices and communities around the globe it's a good coffee karma and a little bit of the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee helps furnish the place with comfortable chairs and so on and so on you see

this is what I call cultural capitalism at its purest you don't just buy a coffee you buy in the very consumerist act you buy your Redemption from being only a consumerist you know you do something for the environment you do something to help starving children in Guatemala you do something to restore the sense of community here and so on and so on this and again I could have go on like the almost absurd example of this is so called TOMS shoes an American company whose formalized one-for-one they claim for every pair of shoes you buy

with them they give a pair of shoes to some African nation and so on and so on so that you know one for one one act of consumerism but included in it you pay for the ingredient of it for doing something of environment and so on and so on this this generates almost a kind of a health reported semantics semantics over investment of burden you know it's not just buying a cup of coffee it's at the same time you again you fulfill a whole series of ethical duties and so on and so on and again

this logic I think is today almost universalized like let's be frank when you go to a store probably you prefer buying organic apples why look deep into yourself I don't think you really believe that those saffron up which costs double the good work genetically modified apples that we are like that they are really any better I claim we are cynic they're skeptics but you know it makes you feel warned that I'm doing something for our Mother Earth I'm doing something for our clan and so on and so on you you get all that so my

point is that this very interesting short circuit where the very as it were act of a goddess consumption and so on already includes the price for its opposite place against all of this I think that we should return to good old Oscar Wilde who still provided the best formulation against this logic of charity let me just quote a couple of lines from the beginning of his the soul of modern man under socialism where he points out that quote it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering then it is to have sympathy with thought

people find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty by hideous ugliness by hideous starvation it is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all these accordingly with admirable though misdirected intentions they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see but the remedies do not cure the disease they merely prolong it indeed their remedies are part of the disease they try to solve the problem of poverty for instance by keeping the poor alive or in the case of a very advanced school by amusing the poor but this is

not a solution it is an aggravation of the difficulty the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible and the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this fame the worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves and so prevented the color of the system being realized by those who suffered from it and understood by those who great that it charity degrades and demoralizes it is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution

of private property I think these lines are more actual than ever nice as it sounds basic income or this kind of a trade with the rich is not a solution there is for me another because of whole series of problems I see here another problem again which is this is for me the last desperate attempt to make capitalism work for socialism let's not discard the evil let's make the evil itself work for the work for the good you remember you are not old enough I am how we were crazy 3040 years ago we were dreaming

about socialism with a human face you know like it is as if today the utmost radical horizon of our imagination is global capitalism with a human face we have the basic rules of the game we make it a little bit more human more tolerant with a little bit more welfare and so on and so on first my attitude is here let's give the devil what belongs to the devil and let's recognize that in the last decades at least till recently at least in the Western Europe I mean there is no bullshitting here let's admit it

I don't think that in any moment in human history it such a relatively large percentage of population live in such a relative freedom welfare security and so on I see this gradually but nonetheless seriously threatened that when we gave the interview for path talk yesterday the guy sucker who is a bright guy he's not just another sucker he told me Stephen that but you're basically misanthropic I told him yes and they praised the British nation you know very well that there is a certain type of misanthropy which is much better as a social attitude than

this trip charitable optimism and so on I think that a mixture of a slide not the hardline apocalyptan but let me call it like you know like we say soft no jean-yves Atomos which about a speech about soft thought I don't agree with him but I would say soft epochal it is like it's not 2012 we know but we are approaching a certain zero point things are unfortunately you may disagree ecologically socially with knew about rights and so on we are approaching a certain point biogenetics and so on where I'm not saying of course I'm

not an idiot that it will be returned to the old Leninist party absolutely not again I'm unequivocal here twentieth century communist experience was a mega mega ethical political economic and showing catastrophe I'm just saying that if all the cherished values of liberalism I love them but the only way to save them is to do something more you know what I'm saying I'm not against charity my god in an abstract sense of course it's better than nothing just let's be aware that there is an element of hypocrisy there that in a way you know like my

argument and I don't doubt people who met him told me that Soros is an honest guy but there is a paradox cow you know he is repairing with the right hand what he ruined with the left hand cuz they blew it no that's all I'm saying for example of course we should help the children it's horrible to see a child whose life is ruined because of an operation which costs twenty dollars but in the long term you know as Oscar Wilde would have said if you if you just operate the child then they will live

a little bit better but in the same situation which produced them you you