Francis Berger
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Against Global Thinking - An Excellent Post By JM Smith

8/18/2020

8 Comments

 
Over at the Orthosphere, JM Smith has posted an incisive criticism that effectively dismantles the misguided, dishonest, and pernicious mindset that nurtures and promotes 'global thinking', which has been extolled as one of the the highest virtues to which an individual can aspire in our modern world.

More precisely, 'global thinking' has taken on the contours of a dictum, one pushed and promulgated by our current totalitarian rulers who demand individuals disregard the reality of the personal and local in favor of the unreality of the impersonal and global.

Smith's post is a must-read, especially now in this time of 'pandemic crisis' when it appears all possible 'solutions' must come packaged within the framework of 'global thinking.'

Some excerpts: 


Although I have for many years taught a college course on World Regional Geography, I have never once admonished my students to “think globally.”  This is because no individual is capable of a global thought that is not either commonplace, fatuous, arrogant, tyrannical or false, and even the brightest college students are not exempt from this this humiliating truth.

And this is not all.  No individual is capable of a serious global thought, but neither are global thoughts needed from any individual.  Every faraway place you might think of is well supplied with people just as intelligent and well-meaning as you are, and these people are far, far more intimately acquainted with local circumstances.  If the apparent problems of that faraway place were susceptible to the solutions that occur to you while you are swinging in your hammock, or smoking your pipe, or astonishing your friends with your intelligent compassion, they would long ago have been solved in precisely that way.

“Thinking globally” is a vice, not a virtue, and we are none of us obligated to think or act otherwise.  “Global thinkers” pride themselves on entertaining thoughts that are either commonplace, fatuous, arrogant, tyrannical or false, and they betray a profound contempt for the capacity of foreigners to manage their own affairs.  Indulgence in these vanities requires them to shirk their real duties to their families, vocations and local communities.  Therefore, you should not fall for the flimflam of these moral poseurs who, like Dickens’ Mrs, Jellyby, have “a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off.  As if . . . they could see nothing nearer than Africa!”

Read the rest here. 
 
8 Comments
Michelle
8/18/2020 11:56:09

I was just a kid in the 1980's but I remember vividly Live Aid and the song "We are The World". I recall getting scolded in religion class when we were told to close our eyes and reflect upon the words to the song as they played it, which I made fun of, because even as a 10 year old I thought it was a stupid exercise. And even now every year satellite radio has a channel dedicated to Christmas music (now called "the Holiday Channel") and they play the song "Do They Know It's Christmas" on rotation, seemingly every hour. The song also came from Live Aid and is about people in West Africa, about how we need to spread our love there, and if they even realize that it's Christmas time. Such arrogance and hubris wrapped in morality and the desire the "help". Walking a mile in another man's shoes is one thing-perspective and compassion are invaluable- believing we can solve their issues from a far aeay land is another. The elites start forming minds so young.

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Francis Berger
8/18/2020 13:49:55

@ Michelle - Interesting how no one discusses the massive amount of aid the West, or Global North, or Developed World, or whatever it is called has given to lesser developed parts of the world over the past century; nor how rising standards of living in Africa due to this aid actually helped bring about the famines of the 80s and 90s, which of course required even more aid. Thanks to medicine and quality of life improvements from the developed world, Africa is now experiencing an unprecedented population boom, yet all we hear about is how terrible the world, especially the West, has been to Africa and how the deep scars of colonialism continue to linger. Well, the powers-that-should-not-be are continuing this line of attack by claiming the birdemic has revealed severe disparities across the globe - disparities that simply must be tackled through global initiatives.

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bruce charlton
8/18/2020 12:49:07

I have just been reading the famous/ notorious Pollyanna novel (very good) - which, interestingly, a century ago, was already satirising the Ladies Aid society of her New England type village for raising money to sent to India - because it looked good on the annual returns, while refusing to help a local orphan boy for whom P. is trying to find a family. Pollyanna concludes that you need to be far off and unknown to get somebody to help you - so she tries writing to remote Ladies Aid groups instead (which still doesn't work - being not sufficiently far away).

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Francis Berger
8/18/2020 13:57:55

@ Bruce - In his post, JM Smith noted Mrs. Jellyby from Dickens' Bleak House as an example of this type of thinking. As you well know, Jellyby was so obsessed by her far away philanthropy that she completely neglected her children and, eventually, bankrupted her husband, Mr. Jellyby.

I haven't read Pollyanna, but from what you have described, the same factors are at play (that Pollyanna is rejected because she is not adequately far away is very amusing). Interesting how nineteenth-century authors picked up on the dangers of global thinking. Now?

Global thinking appears the only acceptable form of thinking in our new post-coup reality. Heaven help us all.

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bruce charlton
8/18/2020 16:03:19

"Global thinking appears the only acceptable form of thinking in our new post-coup reality."

Indeed. It is an example of abstraction and the rule of ('official') statistics (which are misused, but based on numbingly large numbers). I believe that this needed to be established before the coup was possible. So long as people based their life on personal observation and common sense, they could not be induced to live by the Big Lie. Personal observation is buried by stats and abstract models; common sense was subverted by many circular-ideologies Freudian unconscious motives and repression, Marxist false consciousness, nowadays 'implicit bias' wrt race, sex etc (seminars in which are now mandatory at my ex-University, I notice).

Francis Berger
8/18/2020 19:42:55

@ Bruce - What you have noted is not only spot on, but ties in well with your post today about the old ways of Christianity no longer working. For all intents and purposes, contemporary Christian institutions have absorbed some if not all of what you listed above, and have completely abandoned notions of personal experience and common sense.

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Ingemar
8/20/2020 01:12:12

When I was in college, during a Humanities lecture, a student brought up the fact that "we" (that is, Americans and other First Worlders) are the bourgeoisie and that the inevitable course of history is that for the sake of justice "we" have to share our bounty with the global south.

I forgot what the context of that comment was, but it was a course in the Humanities sequence where the West largely abandoned God. Even back then, hearing that comment made me feel uneasy. Even as a son of immigrants from the global south, I knew there was more to the story than that; that inequalities were not inherently bad.

Of course not all browns are created the same. I was not raised to view whites as my mortal enemy and in fact most of the few friends I had were white. Naively I saw myself and others as children of God whose divisions would be healed by His love. In fact I remember lamenting the idea that white phenotypes would disappear probably in my lifetime.

Reply
Francis Berger
8/20/2020 08:45:54

@ Ingemar - Marxist-inspired resentment-breeding is still very much in vogue. The white working/peasant class were once depicted as the oppressed. Funny how they have become the dreaded bourgeoisie lording over world - the ultimate cause of all the world's global ills.

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