Sunday Posts

As Trump speaks about disengaging from China, the Chinese are doubling down on creating a parallel Information Technology universe free of America-made software. The big tech, usually the champion of free trade and free movement of people, has all of a sudden turned sinophobe. Just when a disease borne by globalisation destroys lives and disfigures economies, we are staring at a fundamental reconfiguration of the world - the great decoupling! It's an ugly word (fittingly for the age of Trump, full of sexual innuendo) but one that really captures what's happening: The integrated global economy that we got used to is breaking apart! This was a process well under way for some time, but COVID19 has accelerated the process. We need to start thinking what comes next and adjust our ideas accordingly. However, amid Donald Trump's rhetoric and China's territorial assertions, it is tempting to start thinking about a new Cold War. But that's not what is happening now: The worl...

After undermining the threat and overdoing the panic, we are starting to discuss, if only very gradually, the possibilities of a post-Pandemic world. After Donald Trump's April 12th came and went, we are pinning our hopes on the ever-so-slight flattening of the slope of the curves in various countries. France's 11th May target to reopen the schools, on the sound logic that digital deprivation is now turning into an educational gap, is being taken more seriously.  However, we know this is not going to be a return to normal as we know it. There is increasing speculation whether this is the end of Capitalism. At least one serious thinker, Slavoj Zizek, believes that this is the moment we will start taking communism seriously (not of the soviet variety, but rather of the war economy type that we are living with now). Though this is rather unlikely - socialism of the temporary kind ends up concentrating ever more resources in fewer hands, as we have seen from the last fina...

I titled these posts the Global Condition as I thought my Internet-inspired, immigration-induced state of life is best expressed as such, but the debate whether this is living global or being international is still quite topical. International it indeed used to be, till Global became commonplace. Again, as in my personal narrative, I don't know when the pivot came, but one can say that our views, and words, changed at some point in the early nineties. Perhaps this was Berlin Wall, perhaps this was the demise of Soviet Union, perhaps it was World Wide Web making Internet a commonplace. International used to be cool - it was connected to workers' movements and the global legislative body was named 'United Nations' rather than 'Global Forum' - and nation-state was a progressive, forward-looking thing; but then global took over.   In that sense, one could say being global and living internationally are not the same. It is perhaps rooted in the left-right d...

I have reset my life. I did this before: When I hit a roadblock or got stuck doing something I hated,  I would imagine a day when a new life started. And, it works, because, all frustrations wash away, and hope comes back in. Besides, I let go of expectations, all that I accumulated over time, as those often are the biggest roadblocks. I have just done that again. So, everything needs to start again, and this blog too. Having just separated it out from my work not very long ago, I want to connect it back again. In fact, I want to restart my blog and bring it to the centre of what I do. That may mean letting go of certain things, like my profoundly agitated thoughts about Brexit, Trump and other global calamities, but - who really cared for those thoughts anyway? The new blog would hopefully allow me to be more personal - and meaningful - as I intend to write about a thing that I am discovering more and more: Identity!  I grew up in more hopeful times. By the ti...