I saw two great gigs the other week. The first was - I realised at the time - everything I want in a gig: I knew almost every track in detail, and each was performed pretty much note for note as a facsimile of the recordings produced 20-odd years ago. Whilst this might say something worryingly Patrick Batemanesque about my approach to live music, it more than delivered on my expectations. At the other end of the week was something entirely unique: a 'live' documentary film with a live soundtrack. Whilst the footage (and presumably much of the musical score) will be repeated at each performance, it will not necessarily be in the same manner or order. This was equally enjoyable, as beyond the subject matter and performers, I knew nothing about the performance in advance. The subject matter was R Buckminster Fuller and more specifically the Dymaxion Chronofile, his 50 year attempt to document his entire life and the biggest archive relating to a single person in existence. Of course, with such a vast subject, a one hour documentary can only ever act as a taster, which it did, summarising the life, key achievements and eccentricities of the great man. Chief amongst these eccentricities would seem to be his claim that every person on the planet could be living in a state of plenty by 1985. He repeated this assertion many times and was utterly convinced of its possibility, so it is perhaps fortunate that he didn't live to see it entirely unfulfilled. However, given the temperament of the man, I imagine he may well have simply taken this setback in his stride and tried another approach as he had done so many times before in his life. This is the fundamental difference between 'Bucky' and our current socioeconomic system: he would dust off any failure, pick himself up and look for a new way to innovative; we seem to get up and carry on as if nothing had happened.
Like many of the ideologues of the 20th century, much of Buckminster Fuller's work floundered due to the overwhelming indifference of the populace, rather than as the result of any active opposition. If anyone ever realised the power of the status quo (and it is likely that someone has) they could harness it to a greatly retarding effect. Of course as a force for regression in the world, the status quo does just fine without any encouragement, people will maintain it out of fear that the alternative could be worse. However, to think that any status quo exists despite its lack of benefit because people are selfish is to miss the point: people are bound to be selfish, as otherwise they would struggle to exist. The problem lies in the fact that people are irrationally selfish, to a point where they sustain a status quo that is actively bad for them if they cannot be 100% sure that the alternative will not be at least better than the status quo. We even have a number of proverbs that reinforce this mindset, notably 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush', which is almost always trotted out as irrefutable wisdom. In many ways, this encouragement to make use of what you have is admirable, but at the same time it encourages the short-termist viewpoint that leads to an overvaluation of the status quo. A bird in the hand is only of any value if you are going to eat it straight away, and even then it is only good for one or two meals, whereas two birds in the bush (assuming that there is one of each sex) are indicative of a potential future bird population and therefore many meals to come. Of course the proverb rather assumes that there are any birds in the bush, otherwise the comparison is valueless; 'a bird in the hand is worth twice as much as nothing' somewhat devalues the bird in the hand. So we can find an implicit appeal to resource management within the proverb, but we have to dig for it, and really people don't think that hard about actual events, let alone proverbs. All too often the existence of birds in the bush is taken for granted in the rush to appreciate the one in the hand. It's not necessarily that straightforward either: in many cases it's hard even to determine where the bush is, making a comparison difficult.
This lack of easy comparison compounds the natural resistance to change that means that in most cases people have to actually be starving before they will attempt to affect real political change en mass. You can't really blame people for this; as almost every revolution in history has shown, such a leap into the unknown has rarely brought about the desired result, at least not in the short term. But we generally don't affect change in such a drastic or large-scale manner anyway, usually it is just a case of everyone gradually shifting one way because they see no danger in it. If the desired modification of our behaviour is just to shift one way because we see it as a step in the right direction, then we 'simply' need to know which direction is right, collectively. Clearly, this is far from simple: the right direction collectively is unlikely to be the same thing as the right direction individually, or at least it is unlikely to appear to be so. Using the case study of me, it is easy to see that I am part of the problem when it comes to being a cog in the big evil capitalist machine. I maintain the systems that allow money to flow from the salaries of the workers to the pockets of the casino bankers. So should I stop facilitating this system? If I quit someone else will just fill my shoes, but even if that doesn't happen, even if by some freak occurrence my absence did manage to cripple the system, this creates more problems than it solves. This same system is currently the only game in town when it comes to generating the large sums of money required to pay someone a pension for the last 20-30 odd years of their life; the other systems having been largely discredited. There are many questions around why we've ended up in this situation: most of which revolve around the overlapping interests of the companies that determine that there is no alternative to DC pensions and those that make large profits out of the process. I am not suggesting conspiracy, simply that companies are bound to act in their own interests: anything else would be commercial suicide. Given that this is the status quo that these companies and their employees, such as me maintian, those of us keen to change things need to understand where the subtle shift in direction that we should take is. The radical step has no discernible impact on the system and leaves me at the considerable disadvantage of being unemployed. The options available to me therefore seem limited: I can agitate for lower charges and better investment vehicles, but only a bit; I can make sure my personal funds are ethically invested (or at least invested in Gilts where nothing more ethical is available). I guess I could try and dream up alternative investment vehicles (which would be difficult, as it's really not my area of expertise). I could try to form a well intentioned trade body, but that would involve me overcoming the mistrust of any worker-led body ingrained in peoples' minds by thirty years of relentless anti-union press. Beyond that, my choices get much more radical: I can attempt forms of sabotage. I don't really want to do this for two reasons: firstly in all likelihood such action would result in imprisonment for me; secondly, it would likely result in the loss of many people's pension savings, which I am not willing to countenance. Fundamentally, my reluctance to risk my own and others' well being, and the vested interests of the companies whose processes I service combine to ensure that the status quo is perpetuated regardless of how unjust, inefficient or unsustainable it is.
So it appears that I am in a position where I can make little direct impact or even make small changes to my behaviour that, in concert with many others, will effect real change. I have no personal influence over the decision makers and no means of collective influence. Of course, in a democracy, I should be able to appeal to my political representative with my concerns and they should be raising those concerns at the higher levels that are beyond my reach. Unfortunately that route is effectively barred by the lobbyists who ensure that our representatives favour the concerns of the vested interests over those of the people they are elected to represent. Really I should not have to be the one raising the concerns: in a world where the individuals are afraid to attempt to affect change and organisations are structurally opposed to it, those in political power have a duty to create the circumstances under which change can occur. Unfortunately years of an effective campaign and the relentless use of phrases such as 'nanny state' have meant that any kind of political intervention on behalf of the general population is painted as anti-business and therefore by default bad for everyone. We have reached an odd place where the overwhelmingly dominant ideology has no ideological goal: it merely aims to create the perfect conditions in which the perpetual growth of certain corporations can be sustained regardless of their impact. The politicians - as keen to divest themselves of responsibility as the rest of us - like to claim that this situation will allow the power of the market to prevail. However, the power of the market cannot prevail when those at the top intervene in the market at every point it becomes disadvantageous to them, the market cannot be a great leveller if people keep tipping it up at one end.
I'm fairly certain that R. Buckminster Fuller would have counted himself an ideological capitalist, believing in the power of the market to drive the increased efficiencies that would allow his vision of a world of plenty to be realised. Unfortunately the market sees efficiency only in the tried and tested savings of workforce reduction rather than the risky potential of revolutionary design. At every turn the power of the status quo holds us back. I said that all I expected in a gig was for music I know to be played as it was on the album, maybe it's time I expected more.
