Features

The unrest in France provides us with the opportunity, even the necessity, to think about our world in some new ways. While the various sociological analyses about poverty and racism are important, a longer view may tell us even more. What happens when we hit the “zoom out” key and, instead of a perspective spanning a few years, or even decades, we look over a period of centuries? 

Before the era of colonialism and industrialization, there were no great disparities of wealth between the various regions of the world. The disparities were more local, limited by the reach of armies that brought wealth and slaves back to the center of the empire. With the colonial era, this process of uneven distribution the world’s wealth accelerated greatly. The colonial powers were able to extend their reach to far off lands, and to invest the stolen natural resources, wealth and labor in industrial and technological development, which in turn made a further projection of power possible. This is the process through which, at the cost of millions of lives and through centuries of cruelty and misery, the developed world came to be developed and the underdeveloped world came to be underdeveloped. 

This process, of course is not yet finished. The United States and Great Britain have been asserting their power over the entire Islamic world for well over a century, claiming its resources as their own. The continued attempt to colonize these countries is actively underway today. Today, much of the world’s wealth is concentrated in the banks, stock markets and infrastructure of just a few countries. This extremely unbalanced state of affairs was created by and is maintained by equally extreme coercive measures. 

By any objective standards, the actions of the colonial countries were colossal crimes. Murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, and genocide on grand scales. It was a deeply embedded racism that blinded people to the criminality of all this and that continues to do so. The very same Americans who would take up arms in an instant if a foreign army were to intrude upon our land, can’t fathom why the Iraqis are fighting us. How to explain this other than through some modern version of the “white man’s burden”? The idea that somehow darker skinned people are destined to be governed by light skinned people who of course are acting only in the utmost magnanimity in the interests of higher civilization. 

Perhaps history has laws, much like the laws of thermodynamics or gravity. Maybe simple ideas like “water seeks its own level”, or “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” apply to history as well. What we need to look at is the massive state of planetary imbalance, of disequilibreum brought about in this colonial era. The division of the world into developed and undeveloped isn’t just a static fact, a simple reality: it is a continuing dynamic brought about by extreme force. Paralleling this unequal development is a racism of unequal humanity. Is it possible for such a state of imbalance to simply continue indefinitely? Apparently not. Just like a dam that needs to be continually reinforced in order to hold back the growing buildup of water behind it, the centers of power are having to invest ever more money into the coercive machinery necessary to hold in place the monumental imbalances they have created.  

This is what all well-meaning people need to think about when we ponder the motives of these young people in France. Short term amelioration will not solve the problem, in France or anywhere else. We have to consider the health of the planet as a whole. If the well-being of some depends on the non-well-being of the many, sooner of later something will give way and there will be no well-being at all. This is why these few days of unrest call upon us to search for a new planetary model for this human family. 

Carl Shames is a Kensington resident.