Wars and Conflicts are Pushing Cooperation Off the Radar Screen
Global conflicts dominate today. A wise man once told me; “When the pendulum gets to the bottom it can only go up.” I responded: “Just tell me when it gets to the bottom and starts to go up.” For the moment, the pendulum is accelerating downward on cooperation with no bottom in sight and accelerating upward on conflict. The bomb boys are winning.
International cooperation and global conflict go up and down; when one goes up, the other goes down. Cooperation was dizzyingly high in 1989 at the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, it is in an accelerating downward swing with global conflicts on the way up. How high can conflict swing? How far down can cooperation go?
The conflict side of the pendulum is oscillating near the top and close to a global confrontation. As it gets higher, war drums get louder and louder. We are approaching the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The war continues with no signs of a ceasefire or compromise on either side. Israeli atrocities also go on, with no immediate pause in the fighting or Prime Minister Netanyahu showing signs of changing his announced plans of eliminating Hamas.
War percussionists are warming up. At the February 15 NATO defense ministerial meeting, the NATO Secretary General proudly announced that NATO European allies would spend $388 billion on defense in 2024, “for the first time this amounts to a combined 2% of their GDP.” And Donald Trump threatened NATO members who do not pay their share by encouraging Russia to invade any NATO country that does not.
Adding to drum beats about conflict with Russia and pushing the conflict side higher, media headlines warn about Russia’s nuclear spacecraft program, calling into question the U.S.’s capability to shoot down Russian missiles with nuclear warheads. And the death of Aleksei Navalny “rocks” the February 16-18 Munich Security Conference. Condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin for Navalny’s death excludes any short-term negotiation with Russia on ending the war. (Putin will not resurface as diplomatically acceptable unlike Mohammed bin Salman after the Khashoggi assassination. Putin is far too demonized.)
Drum beats on an upcoming Chinese invasion of Taiwan are softly in the background, but never far away. Minor drum rolls accompany Houthi rebels attacking ships in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and civil wars in Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere go on.
Why are we now in such an elevated state of conflict alert? What is behind the war drums? A simple answer is that there is a plot behind this before the upcoming United States presidential election. (Why shouldn’t progressives also be conspiracy theorists?) Republicans regularly depict Democrats as soft on security, be it a made-up missile gap or barbaric hordes coming across the southern border. For Republicans, Democrats have tree-hugging in their DNA – sorry Scoop Jackson.
The Republican presidential campaign will try to show how competent President Donald Trump would be in keeping Uncle Sam at home as opposed to the Democrat’s and President Biden’s failed foreign policy. As one pre-election Trump post boasts about Trumps’s presidency: “Did ya know? This was the first 4-year term without a new war since Eisenhower.”
Trump’s particular understanding of cooperation is based on his personal relations with potential enemy leaders. If he walked across the DMZ and shook hands with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, participated in a sword dance with Saudi Arabia’s MBS, claimed President Xi Jinping as a “very good friend,” and bragged about his positive relationship with Vladimir Putin – “Putin never ever would have gone into Ukraine if I were president,” – there is no need to be worried about World War III or America’s leadership in the world. Despite these examples, his MAGA isolationism does not move the pendulum any higher toward global cooperation.
Can the United Nations, the world’s largest cooperation institution, soften the war drums and stop cooperation’s descent? What ever happened to the United Nations’ attempt at global cooperation through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Did the flop at COP28 put them to rest? According to a U.N. report of July 2023 concerning the SDGs’ targets: “Progress on more than 50 per cent of targets of the SDGs is weak and insufficient; on 30 per cent, it has stalled or gone into reverse. These include key targets on poverty, hunger, and climate. Unless we act now, the 2030 Agenda could become an epitaph for a world that might have been.”
Not very promising. But there is forthcoming another major attempt by the United Nations to re-energize global cooperation before it reaches the bottom. The United Nations sponsored Summit for the Future will take place on September 23-24, 2024, in New York. Its declared purpose is to “enhance cooperation on critical challenges and address gaps in global governance, reaffirm existing commitments including SDGs and the United Nations Charter, and move towards a reinvigorated multilateral system that is better positioned to positively impact people’s lives.”
What are the chances of the Summit’s success? Adam Day analyzed the possibilities in the International Peace Institute’s Global Observatory: “In a context of deep geopolitical fracture and low levels of trust, there will be a tendency for member states to act defensively, protect national interests, and minimize risks. Such a defensive posture would almost certainly lead to a lowest-common-denominator summit and would do little to advance the bold ideas in the secretary-general’s Our Common Agenda report. In fact, a Pact for the Future in 2024 that merely restated the challenges facing us today alongside an (in-principle) commitment to act collectively could contribute to an even greater sense of mistrust and cynicism about the role of the UN today.”
The outlook for implementation of the Summit’s goals is bleak. Can a proposed Pact for the Future at the Summit realistically silence the war drums and the realpolitik of national interests, competition, and conflict? Will the Summit be able to move the pendulum down from conflict and up on cooperation?
Conflict and cooperation are at opposite ends of a swinging pendulum. For the moment, the bomb boys are winning.
We are steeped in the cultural glorification of capitalist exploitation. What if we rejected economic individualism and instead embraced ideas rooted in collective well-being?
Streaming television channels these days are increasingly inserting advertising into their paid subscriber content. Thus, I recently found myself sitting through several commercials that struck me as emblematic of how out-of-touch corporate marketers are with the economic struggles of ordinary Americans.
A company offering cash advances to low-wage workers makes light of people’s financial difficulties. Take this ad, where a man buying groceries finds himself in the awkward position of having bought more food than he can afford to pay for. A fellow shopper in line points out that a simple app he could download on his phone “gives you up to $250 instantly.” The man pulls out his phone and instantly exclaims, “I got money!” and proceeds to make his purchase. But he sets aside the broccoli he had planned to buy with a wink and a nod to the kid in line next to him, because who likes broccoli anyway, right?
Not only does the ad mislead viewers about how long it takes to actually open an account on the app and have access to cash, but it deceptively portrays the app as “giving” money to a person in need when it’s money that he is borrowing against his own wages. Moreover, he will pay a monthly charge, or extra fees to access the money earlier. And, if he cannot pay it back in time, he will incur hefty interest charges out of his forthcoming wages. The ad also makes light of the plight of those who run out of money to buy groceries, and may have credit scores so low that they cannot get a credit card.
Other ads I encountered were similar. A food delivery service that pays a low base wage but allows workers to keep tips touts itself as a fun activity for those “looking for something new to do,”—in case of boredom? The company has ads showing workers happily dancing in their cars or glamorously shaking their hair (think shampoo ads) out of a scooter helmet, eager to pick up restaurant orders and deliver them to residences. They do this just to “keep things interesting,” because what could be more interesting than driving around all day to deliver hot food? The average pay is about $19 an hour but does not include the cost of fuel or car insurance, or account for income taxes. And of course, health and retirement benefits, as well as paid leave, are entirely out of the question.
Subcontracting companies that allow people to hire others to do grunt work for them also portray themselves in a similarly tantalizing manner. One company recently came under fire for a billboard ad showing a white man who had a project “due ASAP,” but was able to hire a smiling Black woman who would “be on it before EOD.” The ad’s corporate work-lingo gave a lighthearted veneer to what was effectively an exploitative situation.
The gig economy, which promises flexibility and autonomy, has always been touted as beneficial for workers. What often remains unsaid is everything workers lose in exchange: job security, reliable hours, health and retirement benefits, paid sick leave or vacation, promotion opportunities, and meaningful work. Companies based on the gig economy model command an army of part-time workers competing with each other for crumbs.
The seductive marketing that these companies employ has us laughing along at our own misfortunes. They want us to be grateful to live in a digital age where smartphones can turn our daily grind into uncertain wages that are a fraction of what our predecessors got as we smile through the pain of having no healthcare.
The pressure of the gig economy has infected the entire economic system. “Flexibility” is doublespeak for uncertainty. The “perk” of keeping 100 percent of all tips received is a euphemism for downward spiraling wages. The “freedom” of driving one’s own car as an integral part of the job hides the high cost of gig work.
Despite the relentlessly happy face painted over our exploitative economy, many Americans aren’t falling for it. A study by researchers at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences found deep dissatisfaction with the current system. The researchers, in a guest op-ed for the New York Times, found that most people see “greed” as the driving force of the economy, and they “believe the rich and powerful have designed the economy to benefit themselves and have left others with too little or with nothing at all.”
They point out that “[s]tress is a rampant part of American life, much of it caused by financial insecurity.” But corporate ads routinely portray financial insecurity as a fun experience and Americans as willing and enthusiastic participants in a system designed to impoverish them.
Not only are the ads entirely out of step with what Americans face, but the indicators that economists, news media, and politicians use to measure the health of the national economy, are also deeply out of touch with reality.
This disconnect between capitalism’s reputation as an efficient economic system rewarding hard work and innovation and its reality as a system of mass impoverishment is endemic to our culture. At its heart, it is a system rooted in individual well-being, a seductive idea that appeals to the very human need to take sole credit for our achievements and feel shame when we fall through the cracks.
The modern American economy preys on our belief in this ideal. When we can’t afford to pay for groceries it’s our fault. If we can’t pay back the cash advance, we are to blame. Those who don’t grin with joy while delivering takeout are the ungrateful ones.
And if the economy is “booming,” the persistent feeling of collective malaise seems jarring. “Americans remain gloomy about the U.S. economy, even as GDP continues to expand and unemployment is at a five-decade low,” writes a CBS.com economic reporter. That’s because Americans are still struggling to pay off debts, keep up with bills, or afford housing. Have they all failed themselves, or has the economy failed them?
I fantasize about ads centered on economic narratives rooted in collective well-being: A man paying groceries with ease and showing off his union card in his wallet to those in line behind him. A woman who hops on a comfortable, reliable, and free public bus to a well-paying job at the same time every day because her hours are stable and she never has to pay for gas because her taxes cover the bus that she and her fellow workers use every day.
Such ideals are hardly radical and are based on liberation from the capitalist grind: unions even the playing field between bosses and workers, while publicly funded goods and services benefit us all.
If we think of the glorification of exploitative work as corporate propaganda, we can direct our anger over it into realizing the very real, and not-so-radical alternatives.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
A short film and narratives project “Stories for Life” seeks to bring about the shift in culture that humanity needs to survive.
The stories we do and don’t tell about ourselves and these times in which we’re living shape the direction of our lives and our cultures. Stories have the power to alter how we interact and relate. Those who study cultural anthropology and the origins of humanity are finding that cultural stories—the things people collectively believe about ourselves and our capacities—have forever shaped human societies, going back to our early hominid ancestors. In shifting those narratives now, they argue, we have the realistic potential to evolve on purpose as a species. Given the dire, multifront crises of our times—from climate disaster to war to poverty—this kind of cultural and social evolution is desperately needed.
An animated short film, which screened between acts on the big screens of each of the four main stages at the Glastonbury Music Festival in 2022, delves into the idea of story as a means for change. It is titled, “Stories for Life,” and it opens with scenes of fire, a child digging through a pile of trash, plastic rubbage floating in the water, and smoke billowing from an industrial tower. A narrator’s voice speaks over the imagery: “Life is in trouble. As a species, we are facing multiple crises that we can no longer ignore. At the root of them all is our economy; an economy designed to destroy life; an economy designed by us.”
As the narration continues, a series of illustrated signs seem to lay out the challenges of our world, one by one: “Capitalism is crashing. Society is dividing. Democracy is degrading. Climate is tipping. Ecology is vanishing. Disease is spreading. Inequity is rising. Protest is pervading.”
The film takes viewers through a brief history of humanity’s relationship with the Earth. It delves into the problems of our current ways of living, then offers the potential to rewrite the story of our values, and begin to create livable systems in which value is based on the well-being of all life.
Over animations of cave paintings, constellations, and wildlife, the film reminds viewers that “our ancestors lived in intimate relationship with the more-than-human world” and told stories about, “nature as our family, our guardian, our guide. But then some of… [our ancestors] imagined and created ways to control the natural world. This made them feel more powerful and superior to nature. Separate from it. The more powerful they felt the more disconnected from nature they became. And so they began to tell new stories. Stories that normalized domination, control, and the oppression of life. About how nature is our slave, there to be captured and exploited. They began to scorch, spoil, and suffocate our world. And as they did so, these stories spread, and became common sense.”
This narration comes with animations of the industrialization and commodification of resources: factories, men in suits and wigs, ships with cargo. The film goes on to explain that such stories have led people down the path of greed, grand, hustle, and blind progress, and made people “feel separate, not only from nature but from each other, in constant competition and conflict.”
Horror Stories, Love Stories
The narrator notes that these stories then became horror stories of ruined lives and a ruined world, as images of refugee camps, rubbage heaps, and melting ice caps show on screen. “But, it doesn’t have to go on like this,” the narrator says. “We can choose to live by different stories: Love stories about interconnection and interdependence. Love stories that measure success by well-being—the well-being of all life including our own. Love stories about interconnection and interdependence.” Now, the scene is blooming flowers, mycelial networks, collaborative groups of people, and brightly colored animal life.
The film outlines how these “love stories” will lead us to reconnection, so that we can regenerate our relationships with nature and each other, and create a steam that nourishes and supports the life we all want to live rather than destroying life. It closes with the reminder that “we all have the power to tell these stories,” and that many people are already doing so.
The concept behind the film is part of a larger website project launched in 2020, also called Stories for Life, aimed at highlighting stories that support ways forward for humanity and all life. It began as a collaboration between the Green Economy Coalition, Wellbeing Economy Alliance, and the Spaceship Earth, and as its website states: “This project was inspired by the question ‘how do we tell the story of a new economy?’”
The eventual Stories for Life project was co-created by Dan Burgess and Paddy Loughman with the purpose of helping to “create stories that contribute to the re-design of a healthier economy. To bring forth new and ancient stories into our culture, which weave a narrative of interconnection and help us design a new type of economy,” as notes the Stories for Life website.
Co-creator Dan Burgess—a writer, podcast host, and learning guide—says his work centers on supporting the growth of regenerative cultures and creative activism, all aimed at cultural shifts that may “help people remember we are part of a living Earth.” He says in addition to himself and Loughman, there have been many collaborators and supporters, and that Stories for Life’s creators ultimately wanted to help make more readily accessible and clear “the relationship between everyday stories and how they shape cultural narratives, and how those things shape the design of human systems—in this case, the economic system,” he says. “We wanted to help more people understand that and see that in these times, stories are very powerful and we’re all carrying them. So in that sense we all have the ability to make an impact.”
He adds that another aim was to weave together thinking around how cultural stories are currently shaping westernized economic systems, and the destruction those systems are responsible for.
“What we were trying to do [from the outset] is explore the role of stories in either maintaining and perpetuating these destructive economic designs,” he says.
Stories for Life eventually published eight chapters, each referencing the stories of many people. As the Overview chapter states, “There is a better narrative. A healthier narrative that has been carried by cultures around the world for thousands of years, and is now being recognised by the latest scientific breakthroughs. A narrative grounded in the recognition that we are all entangled, integrated, dependent on each other and the more-than-human world around us.”
Burgess shares that the Stories for Life film and concept are being shared by a number of groups and organizations around the world, as a means of inspiration and provocation.
“Our Indigenous brothers and sisters have always known what our ancestors knew, and what modern science now tells us is true: that we are all entangled and wrapped up with life,” he says, adding that Stories for Life was an opportunity to bring together a lifetime of experiences and learning, in a package that seeks to make these concepts more accessible.
Learning Journeys
Burgess suggests the Stories For Life project is a way of giving permission to people to explore new ways of looking at our world—himself included. On his podcast, the Spaceship Earth podcast, which started in 2018, he began to offer what he calls peer-supported learning journeys, for creative activists and regenerative change-makers.
“It’s a kind of action learning,” he says. “We work as a group and we explore, quite deeply, our connection with the natural world. We support each other to cultivate our creative courage to start to point our creative energies at trying to offer something to these times which is going to slow down the destruction of our living Earth and start to bring people back together.”
Out of this exploration, a collaboration between Stories for Life and Burgess’s learning platform, Becoming Crew, launched a three-month learning journey offering in 2023, for people looking to work with stories in this way.
“It’s this idea of becoming crew on Spaceship Earth, like stepping up in service and becoming active participants in the changes we need,” he says. The learning journey brought together a group of 40 different practitioners from nine countries who work with concepts of story and narrative in our culture, who had been on the podcast.
“We deeply explored some of the Stories for Life work, building practices to help people explore the natural world around them in much more intimate, relational ways—and use that re-entanglement with nature as a way of exploring their creativity, and how stories are evolving for them.”
He says there are two major story themes that Stories for Life is working to shift. One centers on how people can, at the micro and macro levels, steer the stories of our relationship to the natural world away from those that frame it as a commodity resource that is separate from ourselves.
“There are millions of stories every day that people are working with, which keep perpetuating that view of the living world as resource,” he says. “You’ve only got to look at the pollution of the oceans, rivers, the air we’re breathing—the toxicity: We treat the living world as a slave to human progress.”
The other major theme with which Stories for Life is working involves shifting people’s conceptions of what is realistic and possible.
“Can we help people imagine a world where we’ve shifted the dominant story of how we measure success away from productivity, accumulation, and growth to a story of the well-being of all life?” he asks. This is a reframing of value, which measures success by the health and well-being of fellow humans and the ecosystems we are a part of.
Burgess says Stories for Life’s narratives are a way of birthing and seeding new stories that may “bring us back together and help people recognize that we’re entangled with all life… and begin to see cultural stories that completely help us, reframe what success is all about in this culture, what it is to be human, what is our relationship with the natural world.”
This article was produced by Local Peace Economy.
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