Ed Andrews: Frozen Planet
Our free market economy based societies are increasingly becoming like life in the poles.
More like this...
Like millions across the UK at the moment, I'm watching octogenarian conservationist David Attenborough's new BBC documentary series, Frozen Planet.
For those who haven't seen it, the nature series takes a look at the various forms of life that straddle the poles of the Earth. While we can all watch in awe and wonder at the spectacular sights of this icy world, the message of the series is very clear: life in these regions is very hard. Long winters and very short summers mean that the various creatures that inhabit these areas must mercilessly fight for their own survival. And as a result, polar bears relentlessly stalk seals, penguin chicks are poached by South Polar Skuas, and minke whales and seals are slowly tormented and killed by packs of killer whales.
While watching it last night, one part stuck with me in particular. It was a pair of Arctic wolves tracking down a herd of muskoxen eager for a kill. The muskox is the animal world equivalent of a 'double-hard bastard'. Weighing up to 400kg, standing nearly a metre and a half high, and with both sexes wielding some seriously sharp horns, it could destroy a wolf, and there's a whole herd of them. But the wolves must feed, and so armed with skill and cunning they tactically manoeuvre to split the herd to get at the weaker infant, which they do. But as cute as the baby muskoxen may look, it's not the time to get sentimental. This is what it takes for the wolves to feed their own, equally cute cubs.
This harsh state of nature and the war for survival was applied to man by influential 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his work, Leviathan, which noted that life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". The result of this is that, in this state of anarchy, everyone has a natural right to fight for their own survival above anything else.
Hobbes’ brutal theory was traditionally applied to relations between states in the absence of a global government, but fast forward several centuries, and this raw state of nature is exactly what our neo-liberal, free-market economy is becoming: a polar existence where the strongest are free to do what they choose.
But the apex predators in this world are the super-wealthy: bankers, FTSE 100 corporations, industrial oligarchs and the puppet 'democratic' governments around the world that act in their interests – or as some have been mathematically inaccurately referring to as The 1%. The young they feed are their own shareholders and tax-exempt offshore bank accounts, helping breed more of these predators devoid of empathy.
Like the Arctic wolves, these predators are hopelessly outnumbered and so they must split the herd in order to pick out the easiest targets for their own enrichment; the poor, the disenfranchised, the least educated, the foreign. And like in the polar wilderness, there is no authority telling them what they can and can't do, leaving them to simply get away with committing scams, manipulations, exploitations and downright thefts. See the various government responses to the global financial crisis of bailing out the banks' crippling debts and printing more money for the banks to squander. Being far too terrified of the power of these predators, the response is to sacrifice the weakest and give the predators more freedom to do what they do in the vain hope that the rest can feed off their scraps.
However, even in the wilds of the Arctic, this natural hierarchy has a twist. In the Frozen Planet episode Summer, a hungry polar bear approaches a colony of Arctic terns – a seagull-like flock of birds - intent on feasting on hundreds of their young. But faced with this aggression, the Arctic tern responds with collective direct action. They take it in turns to dive-bomb the bear, stabbing him with their stiletto-bladed beaks. Unable to defend against these painful attacks, the bear retreats off to find an easier kill or potentially perish on an empty stomach.
We are constantly being told that the free-market is the only way, the state of nature that we must all learn to survive in and protect our own interests. But much like the Arctic tern, this state of nature still allows for collective action, turning the weak into the strong and forcing these mighty predators to change their actions. Did I not mention what happened to the baby muskox? Well, the herd stampeded and chased the wolves off, saving their young.
These predators know all to well the danger of the collective. Why else do you think they are trying to restrict the growth of the Occupy Movement in Portland, New York and London with over-aggressive policing? Why is the right to protest and gather in public spaces being steadily eroded? Why is the UK’s Conservative-led government trying to restrict access to the aggregating power of social networking in the wake of the London summer riots? Why have trade unions been so vilified in the past 30 or so years?
These questions, like so many more have one, very natural answer: There's strength in numbers. Even the animals know that.
Subscribe to HUCK for six issues
Only £21 (UK) / £44 (EU) / £59 (Rest of the World).
Frozen Planet (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (3)
Please note: Your comment may be held in moderation for approval by an administrator to prevent spamming. This usually doesn't take long, please be patient.
The real point for Hobbes is that a state of nature could just as well occur in seventeenth century England (21st?) should the King’s authority be successfully undermined. It could occur tomorrow in every modern society, for example, if the police and army suddenly refused to do their jobs on behalf of government. Unless some effective authority stepped into the King’s place (or the place of army and police and government), Hobbes argues the result is doomed to be deeply awful, nothing less than a state of war.
You COMPLETELY missed the point of what he is saying. You have gone for the one quote that highlights what he said would happen with no authority to protect us then suggested we work anarchically to undermine the authority which protects us (through regulation etc). If anything you should demand more authority from the state, more regulation not anarchy.
tl;dr Hobbes = protect the king at all costs to avoid a return to state of nature. You state (I think?) worth collectively to undermine the King/Banks which you generalise to be 'they' who loom over us?
Thanks for commenting. I feel I should probably should clarify what I meant by my reference to Hobbes:
I feel that these corporate interests currently exist in an Hobbesian (anarchic) state of nature where they are above government regulation and free to prey on whoever they like – i.e. in a world where there is no authority figure or 'king' to keep them in check and preserve order. This is much like the poles.
Therefore to protect ourselves, we must act collectively against these interests and articulate that through grassroots democratic action and protests.
Therefore our 'king' should be a fully democratic and representative state body. Something which I don't believe we have at the moment. Any laws we have to protect ourselves at the moment - ie. minimum wage, EU Social Chapter/Working Time Directive - are forever under attack by lobbying by rich and powerful interests. Therefore, we must unite - like the terns - to protect ourselves from these predatory acts.
I am not in favour of anarchy whatsoever. I am indeed in favour of more authority and regulation but achieved through a democratic state - articulated by collective action - that can protect the interests of the weak and vulnerable against these powerful corporate interests.
I hope that clears it up?
Cheers,
Ed