Channeling the Spirit of Posterity, Long Dead

For the five or six years this blog has existed I have strongly lamented the demise of posterity in our societies, our economies and  our politics.   In an era in which any perceived fetter on maximized production and maximized consumption was denounced as heretical, posterity was irrelevant, valueless or worse.

Rejecting posterity has come at an enormous price, not to us but to generations that will follow.   We have taken advantage of everything we could exploit and kicked the consequences down the road wherever possible.   Apparently the Europeans have been little different.

"Interestingly, the sheltered existence [today's economic, intellectual and political elite] led, enjoying prosperity and security, wasn’t of their own making. Merkel and Cameron, like former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and ex-British PM Tony Blair before them, inherited it from their predecessors – and turned out to have been but an efficient “consumer cooperative”, as Zygmunt Bauman puts it, consuming the fruits of somebody else’s work and basking in the glow of successes that weren’t theirs.

Europe was created and built by a generation for which a tragic past – embodied by Auschwitz – had been a living experience. The European Union’s founding fathers – Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schumann or Alcide De Gasperi – understood that only by working together could they build something lasting and good. European solidarity proved a blessing.

Today’s ruling elites lived in entirely different conditions, enjoying security, peace, and systematic improvement in living standards. This was the effect of building a reasonable welfare state. How is it that after such a spectacular success Europe is experiencing today what is perhaps an equally spectacular fiasco? It’s because of the present elites’ belief that they simply inherited the EU from their predecessors, rather than having it on loan for their children. The mentality and spirit of the people leading Europe today can be summed up thus: “Let’s enjoy life as much as we can because soon the EU will be just a memory”.

What is Europe’s greatest, most burning issue today? We see it in the streets and squares of our cities. “We have the right to vote, but we have no work!” cry the young unemployed. We have a democracy, but no bread or homes. A precariat is emerging in front of our very eyes. What sort of people does it consist of? An apt and curt answer is given by Guy Standing, author of The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class: virtually everyone. At its core are young people.

Disdain for posterity is readily seen.  It can be seen in the increasing gap between rich and poor, in inequality of wealth, income and opportunity.  It can be seen in the weakening of the middle class, the essential engine that generates opportunity for future generations.  It can be seen in the carefully sculpted austerity measures the Right favours and, where it can, imposes.   It can be seen in our utter indifference to environmental degradation of all descriptions.   It can be seen in the obscene debts we amass even as the richest of the rich amass obscene wealth.

We are laying the foundations for unrest that can lead to upheaval, revolt.  If the young are the "New Dangerous Class" they are of our own making.

Posterity = Prosperity

I have long argued that the genetic flaw in Western society, particularly North American society, the missing gene that pretty much dooms us all, is the absense of posterity in our planning.

A couple of months back I took this look at posterity:

Posterity doesn't fit into our economic model of production and consumption because it creates a fetter on both. We have lost our understanding of the importance of posterity to our society, to our country. We no longer plan today for generations to come far in the future. We no longer look much beyond the next electoral cycle.

Protecting posterity is an act of collective consciousness and will. It is acknowledging that we're entitled to our fair share and no more. We can't have it all without depriving future generations of their fair share.

To try to understand the idea of "fair share" imagine if our great, great, great grandparents had followed our path.

Imagine if our ancestors had two things - the ability to consume everything they could get their hands on and a blind indifference to the day when it was our turn to populate this country. Imagine if two or three generations had gone on a rapacious binge gobbling up the world's resources; going into serious deficit on renewables (emptying the oceans, logging off the forests, transforming farmland into desert) and fouling the environment. Then consider how their depredations might impact on your life today. I think that's beyond the imagination of all but the best science fiction writers but that's of no real matter. It's enough in any event to make the case for posterity and the concept of "fair share."

I'm revisiting the subject of posterity today because of an excellent article in The New York Times exploring why Norway, every teabagger's evil empire, is doing so darned well while the rest of the Western world reels under global meltdown:

The global financial crisis has brought low the economies of just about every country on earth. But not Norway.

With a quirky contrariness as deeply etched in the national character as the fjords carved into its rugged landscape, Norway has thrived by going its own way. When others splurged, it saved. When others sought to limit the role of government, Norway strengthened its cradle-to-grave welfare state.

And in the midst of the worst global downturn since the Depression, Norway’s economy grew last year by just under 3 percent. The government enjoys a budget surplus of 11 percent and its ledger is entirely free of debt.

Norway is a relatively small country with a largely homogeneous population of 4.6 million and the advantages of being a major oil exporter. It counted $68 billion in oil revenue last year as prices soared to record levels. Even though prices have sharply declined, the government is not particularly worried. That is because Norway avoided the usual trap that plagues many energy-rich countries.

Instead of spending its riches lavishly, it passed legislation ensuring that oil revenue went straight into its sovereign wealth fund, state money that is used to make investments around the world. Now its sovereign wealth fund is close to being the largest in the world, despite losing 23 percent last year because of investments that declined.

“The U.S. and the U.K. have no sense of guilt,” said Anders Aslund, an expert on Scandinavia at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “But in Norway, there is instead a sense of virtue. If you are given a lot, you have a responsibility.”

Eirik Wekre, an economist who writes thrillers in his spare time, describes Norwegians’ feelings about debt this way: “We cannot spend this money now; it would be stealing from future generations.”

It's hard not to contrast Norway's approach to its oil wealth to that of the Conservative governments of Alberta. The Klein/Stelmach machine is still glued to the fantasy that growth will lift their province out of its problems. And it's not just Alberta. The rest of us would do well to give some serious consideration to this same object lesson. Whether we live in British Columbia or Ontario or New Brunswick, we all need to grasp the idea that posterity is the lifeblood of our nation's future.

Posterity isn't about preserving grand edifices for future generations. It's all about preserving a world for those future generations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/business/global/14frugal.html?em