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Zurich your fat rich step dad who isn't fond of you
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zürich
your fat rich s t e p d a d w h oisnt fond of you.
when travelling in impoverished regions in galling luxury, as I have done,
you have to undergo some high-wire ethical arithmetic to legitimise your
position. If you can’t geographically separate yourself from poverty, then
you have to do it ideologically. You have to believe inequality is OK. You
have to accept the ideas that segregate us from one another and nullify
your human instinct for fairness.
Edward Slingerland, a professor of ancient Chinese philosophy at Stanford
University, demonstrated this instinct to me with the use of hazelnuts. As
we spoke, there was a bowl of them on the table. “Russell,” he said, scoop-
ing up a handful, “we humans have an inbuilt tendency towards fairness. If
offered an unfair deal, we will want to reject it. If I have a huge bowl of
nuts and offer you just one or two, how do you feel?”
The answer was actually quite complex. Firstly, I dislike hazelnuts, con-
sidering them to be the verminous titbits of squirrels. Secondly, they were
my hazelnuts anyway; we were in my house. Most pertinently though, I felt
that it was an unfair offering when he had so many nuts. He explained that
human beings and even primates have an instinct for fairness even in sit-
uations where this instinct could be seen as detrimental. “You still have
more nuts now than before,” he chirped, failing to acknowledge that all the
nuts and indeed everything in the entire house belonged to me.
We then watched a clip on YouTube where monkeys in adjacent cages in a
university laboratory perform the same task for food. Monkey A does the
task and gets a grape – delicious. Monkey B, who can see Monkey A, performs
the same task and is given cucumber – yuck. Monkey B looks pissed off but
eats his cucumber anyway. The experiment is immediately repeated and you
can see that Monkey B is agitated when his uptown, up-alphabet neighbour is
again given a grape. When he is presented with the cucumber this time, he
is furious – he throws it out the cage and rattles the bars. I got angry on
his behalf and wanted to give the scientist a cucumber in a less amenable
orifice. I also felt a bit pissed off with Monkey A, the grape-guzzling lit-
tle bastard. I’ve not felt such antipathy towards a primate since that one
in Raiders of the Lost Ark with the little waistcoat betrayed Indy.
Slingerland explained, between great frothing gobfuls of munched hazelnut,
that this inherent sense of fairness is found in humans everywhere, but
that studies show that it’s less pronounced in environments where people
are exposed to a lot of marketing. “Capitalist, consumer culture inures us
to unfairness,” he said. That made me angry.
When I was in India, a country where wealth and
poverty share a disturbing proximity, I felt
a discomfort in spite of being in the exalted
position of Monkey A. Exclusive hotels require
extensive, in fact military, security. As we
entered the five-star splendour through the metal
detectors, past the armed guards, I realised
that if this was what was required in order to
preserve this degree of privilege, it could not
be indefinitely sustained.
These devices that maintain division are what my
friend Matt Stoller focused on when I asked him
what ideas he had that would change the world.
I first met Matt in Zuccotti Park, Manhattan, in
the middle of the Occupy Wall Street protest in
2011. Matt understands power: at the time, he
worked as a policy-wonk for a Democratic con-
gressman and his days were spent in the cogs of
the lumbering Washington behemoth. Beneath his
cherubic, hay-coloured curls and proper job, he
detested the system he was trapped in.
Since then, he has regularly prised apart the
clenched and corrupt buttocks of American poli-
tics and allowed me to peer inside at its dirty
workings. I asked Matt for ideas that would aid
the revolution; his response was, as usual,
startling and almost proctologically insightful.
“No more private security for the wealthy and
the powerful,” he said. I nervously demanded he
explain himself. He did: “One economist argued
in 2005 that roughly one in four Americans are
employed to guard in various forms the wealth of
the rich. So if you want to get rid of rich and
poor, get rid of guard labour.”
This may be the point in the article where you
start shouting the word “hypocrite”. Don’t think
I’m unaware of the inevitability of such a
charge. I know, I know. I’m rich, I’m famous, I
have money, I have had private security on and
off for years. There is no doubt that I as much
as anyone have to change. Revolution is change.
I believe in change, personal change most of
all. Know, too, that I have seen what fame and
fortune have to offer and I know it’s not the
answer. Of course, I have to change as an indi-
vidual and part of that will be sharing wealth,
though without systemic change, that will be a
sweet, futile gesture.
Now let’s get back to Matt Stoller, banning
private security and ensuring that I’ll have to
have my own fist fights next time I’m leaving the
Manchester Apollo.
“The definition of being rich means having more
stuff than other people. In order to have more
stuff, you need to protect that stuff with sur-
veillance systems, guards, police, court systems
and so forth. All of those sombre-looking men in
robes who call themselves judges are just sen-
tinels whose job it is to convince you that this
very silly system in which we give Paris Hilton
as much as she wants while others go hungry is
good and natural and right.”
This idea is extremely clever and highlights the
fact that there is exclusivity even around the
use of violence. The state can legitimately use
force to impose its will and, increasingly, so
can the rich. Take away that facility and soci-
eties will begin to equalise. If that hotel in
India was stripped of its security, they’d have
to address the complex issues that led to them
requiring it.
“These systems can be very expensive. Ameri-
ca employs more private security guards than
high-school teachers. States and countries with
high inequality tend to hire proportionally more
guard labour. If you’ve ever spent time in a
radically unequal city in South Africa, you’ll
see that both the rich and the poor live sur-
rounded by private security contractors, barbed
wire and electrified fencing. Some people have
nice prison cages, and others have not so nice
ones.”
Matt here, metaphorically, broaches the notion
that the rich, too, are impeded by inequality,
imprisoned in their own way. Much like with my
earlier plea for you to bypass the charge of
hypocrisy, I now find myself in the unenviable
position of urging you, like some weird, bizarro
Jesus, to take pity on the rich. It’s not an
easy concept to grasp, and I’m not suggesting
it’s a priority. Faced with a choice between
empathising with the rich or the homeless, by
all means go with the homeless.
He continues: “Companies spend a lot of money
protecting their CEOs. Starbucks spent $1.4m.
Oracle spent $4.6m. One casino empire – the Las
Vegas Sands – spent $2.45m. This money isn’t
security so much as it is designed to wall these
people off from the society they rule, so they
never have to interact with normal people under
circumstances they may not control. If you just
got rid of this security, these people would
be a lot less willing to ruthlessly prey on
society.”
Matt here explains that at the pinnacle of our
problem are those that benefit most from the
current hegemony. The executors of these new
empires that surpass nation. The logo is their
flag, the dollar is their creed, we are all their
unwitting subjects.
“People can argue about the right level of guard
labour. You conceivably could still have public
police, but their job should be to help protect
everyone, not just a special class. If you
got rid of all these private systems, or some
of these systems of surveillance and coercive
guarding of property, you’d have a lot less in-
equality. And powerful and wealthy people would
spend a lot more time trying to make sure that
society was harmonious, instead of just hiring
their way out of the damage they can create.”
Matt’s next idea to create a different world was
equally cunning and revolutionary: get rid of
all titles. “Mr President. Ambassador. Admiral.
Senator. The honourable. Your honour. Captain.
Doctor. These are all titles that capitalism
relies on to justify treating some people better
than other people.”
Matt is an American, so when it comes to de-
ferring to the entitled, he is, let’s face it,
an amateur compared with the British. Look at
me, simpering to Professor Slingerland. I can’t
wait to prostrate myself before his sceptre of
diplomas. Plus we’ve got a bloody royal family.
What’s he going to say about that?
“One of the most remarkable things you learn
when you work in a position of political in-
fluence is just how much titles separate the
wealthy and the politicians from citizens. Ordi-
nary people will use a title before addressing
someone, and that immediately makes that ordi-
nary person a supplicant, and the titled one a
person of influence. Or if both have titles, then
there’s upper-class solidarity. Rank, hierarchy,
these are designed to create a structure whereby
power is shaped in the very act of greeting
someone.”
I’m getting angry again. Matt’s right! Titles
are part of the invisible architecture of our
social structure. I’m never using one again. If
I ever see Slingerland in the street, I shall
alert him by hollering: “Oi, fuck-face!” and
then throw a hazelnut at him.
What does Matt propose?
“One thing you can do to negate this power is
to be firm but respectful, and address anyone
and everyone by their last name. Mr, Ms or Mrs
is all the title you should ever need. This
allows you to treat everyone as your equal, and
it shows everyone that they should treat you as
their equal.”
This is a provocative suggestion – particularly
to those of us who live in monarchies. I mean,
in England, we have a queen. A queen! We have
to call her things like “your majesty”. YOUR
MAJESTY! Like she’s all majestic, like an eagle
or a mountain. She’s just a person. A little
old lady in a shiny hat – that we paid for. We
should be calling her Mrs Windsor. In fact,
that’s not even her real name, they changed it
in the war to distract us from the inconvenient
fact that they were as German as the enemy that
teenage boys were being encouraged, conscripted
actually, to die fighting. Her actual name is Mrs
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Mrs Saxe-Coburg-Gotha!! No wonder they changed
it. It’s the most German thing I’ve ever heard –
she might as well have been called Mrs Brat-
wurst-Kraut-Nazi.
Titles have got to go.
I’m not calling her “your highness” or “your
majesty” just so we can pretend there isn’t
and hasn’t always been an international cabal
of rich landowners flitting merrily across the
globe, getting us all to kill each other a
couple of times a decade. From now on she’s Frau
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Come on, Frau Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, it’s time for
you to have breakfast with Herr Saxe-Coburg-Go-
tha. And you can make it yerselves. And by the
way, we’re nicking this castle you’ve been doss-
ing in and giving it to 100 poor families.
Actually, you can stay if you want, they’ll need
a cleaner. You’ll have to watch your lip, Herr
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, some of ’em ain’t white.
We British have much to gain from Matt’s title-
less utopia.
He continues: “If this became common, you’d
shortly see sputtering rage from the powerful,
and increased agitation from the erstwhile meek.
People need to mark their dominance; that is the essence of highly unequal capitalism. If they
can’t do so, if they aren’t allowed to be dominant, to be shown as being dominant, then the system
cannot long be sustained.”
Matt’s ideas are like the schemes of a cackling supervillain from a Bond movie. At first, they seem
innocuous, but then they elegantly unravel the fabric of society. He suggests we start now: “This
is something that anyone and everyone can act on, a tiny act of rebellion that takes no money,
influence or social status. You just need courage, and every human has that.”
This is an edited extract from Revolution by Russell Brand,
Z-00117 MAY 2015
Zürich.your fat rich step dad who isnt fond of you.extract from Russell brand (Revolution).Dean Ira
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