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Consider gas giants such as Neptune , with its 700 mph winds. Reflect on those Yellow dwarfs and Black holes. Ponder cosmic explosions and stellar expansions that
we can only dream of. And what can we make of The Big Bang , when violence on an inconceivable scale and unprecedented levels of energy are posited to have arisen
out of nothing ?The Cosmic Dawn came about with excess. Did this give way to a “self-stabilising” process or one of incessant instabilities ? Before and
during earthly evolution , excess was the norm , a driving force behind all of the extinctions , explosions , dryings and delugings that preceded humanity’s brief
hour upon the stage. Mull over the Aztecs cranking up the human sacrifice rate in their latter days.
Now muse upon the fate of their uncompromising invaders. The Spanish Empire imploded in a frenzy of inflation , spiralling military expenditure and Counter_Reformation. Some moustache-twirling German bankers known as The Fuggers were also involved. And since then ? The Industrial Revolution ! The Nuclear weapons race ! As things are
out there in the excessive reaches of outer space , so it proves to be for all human societies : waning energies are presaged by hypermanic activity in a doomed effort
to re-assert vanishing powers. And in either case there’s much dark matter lurking in the shadows.
Woe betide the wayfaring stranger who ventures abroad on an average U.K. Saturday night. After Business-friendly government saw fit to extend operational opportunities
for pubs throughout the land , the Alcohol industry gratefully responded with Student Nights , Mad Bull Nights , Karaoke Nights and Vodka Slammer Nights. The subsequent
Cossack behaviour throughout those extended opening hours led to city and village centre hullabaloos on the scale of VE Night , every night. Groups of half-dressed girls
shrieking and cackling , lines of foul-mouthed youths staggering through the streets from bar to bar. Public urinating and vomiting , bottles flying through the air. For
For the stay-at-homes , the choice of a hundred T.V. channels’ advertising schedules , punctuated every now and again by ‘popular’ program formats. That is , more game
or ‘reality’ shows , more sport or cooking , more canal or train rides , yet more sport , some clinical pathology and more documentaries about the Nazis.
Long before our supersaturated vocabulary of Olympian commentary came into being (“Unbelievable” , “Awesome” , “Incredible” , “Fantastic” , “Indescribable”) , this planet
has been subjected to several more distant excesses. Cataclysmic tectonic – or meteoric – activity laying waste successive terrestrial environments and , in due course ,
all of their former inhabitants. A trigger for the wanton energies of Evolution to move into top gear and a riot of new life-forms appears in the fossil record. They came
to re-colonise a purged globe. Many were destined to extinction by subsequent competition and others to develop and flourish like nobody’s business ... or rather , like
Business itself in our own days of global capitalism , to achieve a temporary systemic dominance. Making hay until the next transition between “that’s just how the world is”
and “look at what there used to be”.
Marx predicted the destination of free-market capitalism as an all-encompassing , mad dance of unbridled desire and financial speculation that would prevail over all the
inhibitions , thrift and prudence of the ‘respectable’ society of his day. He was more prescient here (in Das Capital) than in The Communist Manifesto.(1)
Political Economists , along with satirists and country songwriters , are better served by diagnosing the ills of existing systems than in their proposals for future social
or domestic felicity. Moreover , the desire for more (as everyone in marketing and professional football knows) tends to have no limits. Enough could never be enough
for certain rockstars , First World War generals and for those at the hard heart of the Finance Industry.
Wig
(1) Look him up , old Karl , or better still , read Das Capital itself.
A biography from 1999 by Francis Wheen paints a Marx who was as fond of a good joke as his namesake Groucho.
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Archive
Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan & Charles Dickens, 8th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25th July 2012
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