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A DREAM

1. THE EVENING


"Chez Armand", a private club, stands in woody hills with its 
back against the lake and mountain crests behind. Selected 
tycoons congregate there, sheltered from the vulgar mob. 
Simple fellows are occasionally asked into the Presence and 
this evening I happened to be one of them. Why Joe Morelli, 
chairman of Globholds, one of the world's most powerful men, 
should invite me was more than I could say. Surely he had 
no interest in my physics research.

So it's perhaps my essay on "global paradox": 
the anti-globalist masses manifest and revolt all over the 
world only to run like one man to eat Globburgers, thus 
inadvertently promoting globalization and making Globholds 
a giant business.

It sounds crazy. Still, each madness goes by some reason of 
its own, only this "reason" escapes our traditional dogmatic 
"pro or con" analysis.

Einstein said: "A new manner of thinking is essential if 
humankind is to survive".

My essay outlined a possible new manner: "grey dialectic" 
investigating grey zones between black and white pros and 
cons. But Morelli doubtless never read it.

I parked in front of a Georgian house of lovely proportions, 
delightful in the setting of dark pines rising up behind it. 
A medium height, slender fellow attired in cotton jogging 
suit came down the perron. I recalled that Morelli advocates 
simplicity and never dresses up.

-I'm Joe Morelli- he greeted me -Call me Joe, we're easygoing 
people here.-

Simplicity was undoubtedly the motto.

Up to a limit. The menu presented by Armand was not exactly 
simple:

Aperitif: Blanquette de Limoux. 
Bisque d'écrevisses 
Les oeufs en meurette à la lie de Puligny. 
Wine: Chevalier Montrachet. 
Roquefort Société. Wine: Château Yquem. 
Digestif: Grande Champagne Cognac Rechou.

Morelli did not seem to stick overmuch with his Globburgers.

Explanation came with the cognac.

-I want to talk to you about your "global paradox"- said 
Morelli. So he read it after all!

-All my enterprises run up against this madness, but I could 
never understand it. It feels like I'm moving through a swamp. 
Everybody writes about globalization, but it's all committed 
pro or con stuff which, as you rightly said, does not help. 
So I took a fancy to your grey dialectic. Where did you pick 
it up?-

-In physics. Most people are one-sided. Physicists don't 
write, and writers ignore physics. But I do some of both. 
So, for instance, I know a bit about light. In some context 
it has the aspect of discrete particles, in another, a 
contradictory one of continuous waves. We don't know the 
nature of light in general. We can talk only about its often 
contradictory aspects. Likewise, we cannot talk about 
globalism in general, but only about its contradictory 
aspects. Not my fault. Reality happens to be made this way 
and I did not invent it.-

-Fine. Let's talk aspects and play a game. Could you put on 
the hat of our enemy and say why you hate us so much?-

-A hundred reasons, but that's what first jumps to mind: "the 
world of homogeneous consumption" where people everywhere eat 
the same food, wear the same clothes and live in carbon copy 
houses. That offends all and sundry, as everyone believes 
himself to be unique and extraordinary.-

-Good start. Now put on our hat and try to retort.-

-Easy. First, it's not your objective at all, just a false 
picture painted by your enemies. You are not in business 
of creating homogeneous or heterogeneous worlds but in that 
of making money by feeding the largest possible global 
population. Now, if the population prefers cheap uniformity 
to more expensive diversity, that's their problem.-

-Now the ball's in their court. How do you counter this one?-

-You talk about feeding global population, about eradicating 
hunger and poverty, you print full page ads showing gentle 
breeze waving through a green sea of cereals amidst a desert, 
but your "Green Revolution" is a barefaced lie. 
It introduced monocultures, destroyed biodiversity, exhausted 
water reserves, created water-logged and saline deserts and 
destroyed peasant livelihoods. 
You buy land suitable for permanent crops at dirt cheap 
prices and turn it to monocultures of cotton, peanuts, or 
flowers for export. And when you grow these lovely seas of 
cereals, it's for feeding factory raised animals and for 
making Globburgers. A few natives, connected to local Mafia 
join the rich and enlarge the customer base of Globburgers. 
Some others get semi-slave jobs with the landlords and can 
afford one or two burgers a month. The majority is excluded, 
sentenced to hunger and to precarious attempts to survive 
through deforestation and abuse of marginal, non productive 
lands. Half of all grains produced, which could eradicate 
hunger, are used to feed factory livestock. Rising 
consumption of factory meat exerts tremendous pressure 
on scarce land and water, deteriorates environment and 
destroys livelihoods. Your fortunes grow upon hunger, misery 
and pollution.-

-All true, we prosper on hunger, on misery and pollution. 
It's wrong ethically and economically, but I'm not a priest, 
so let's stick to business. Economically speaking we are 
converting free goods, such as water to scarce, prestige 
goods, such as gold. Economy is not making money, but 
providing and distributing goods.  Money is worth only as 
much as the goods behind it. A thousand dollars buys a good 
PC, so it's good money. Drinkable water was free and is still 
worth only a few cents a litter. But someday we shall succeed 
to make it so scarce that a litter will cost a thousand 
dollars, whose value will thus fall to that of a few cents. 
Our fortunes will collapse and not buy us enough water to 
drink, nor air to breathe. Nor survival in the revolt of 
hungering, desperate, excluded billions. Rather bad business 
strategy.-

-So, why don't you do something about it?-

-Because I simply don't know what could be done. It's fine 
to proclaim humanitarian panaceas as long as it is demagogic 
prattle, but making decisions is a different matter. I made 
an experiment. Armand prepared snacks worthy of Maxim's from 
best products of his organic farms. We offered them at the 
same price as the standard, nauseating Globburgers. Nobody 
wanted them. Once conditioned, people stick to the most 
noxious stuff and disdain the best. One talks about teaching 
the third world to fish rather than giving them fish. Indeed, 
if you give money to the poor, they'll spend it on 
Globproducts and end where they began. So, maybe, give them 
back some of Globholds' land trusting that they will abandon 
disastrous monocultures and restore old, sustainable 
companion planting, which would feed them adequately. 
No hope there. They will resell the land, buy TV sets in 
Globstores, disappear in some arid region and die of hunger. 
Caught up in the gears of our system, they cannot escape. 
Anyway, there is nowhere enough money to buy Globholds' 
property and if there were, Globholds would not sell.-

-You could be obliged. Anti-globalists proclaim that only 
a political change which would abolish globalization may 
produce a solution.-

-Well, let's resume our game and have the grey dialectician 
answer this one.-

-You can't abolish progress. Revolt against guns is nonsense. 
Only guns can protect you from guns. It's not the gun, but 
its usage which is good or bad. Likewise, only globalism can 
protect you from globalism. Globalization of the market place 
may be matched by "globalism with human face" based on human 
values. But that involves some new power structures, which 
takes us into deep waters.-

-Because you need experience to talk reasonably about power. 
Power is using currents, not returning rivers with a stick. 
Currents may be canalized into beds, ready to take the flow. 
Politics provides locks and sluice gates, but beds must be 
there, or currents will go wild, out of control. Beds ready 
to take the flow of freedom were at hand when Gorbachev 
opened the gates of glasnost. With a bit of lobbying I can 
provide any reasonable gate. But beds must be there 
beforehand. People must be taught to think and not to react 
with their guts. But what exactly should be taught? Can you 
make an outline for tomorrow?-

-But we have seen that all critical issues have contradictory 
aspects, that we need dialectic to grasp them. How can we 
teach it without muddling people furthermore? How can I 
answer it in one day?-

-If you don't know it tomorrow, you won't know it in ten 
years. Armand will give you a nice room and I'll meet you 
at lunch. The night will bring advice.-


2. THE NIGHT


I was in a remarkably lofty cathedral. Soaring capitals of 
columns were hard to discern. Ribs raising from them melted 
with dark webbing, as if the nocturnal sky were the vault. 
Choir, devoid of altar, encompassed in its stead a colonnade 
carrying a screen-like wall topped with a parabolically 
shaped niche.

A man in formal dress advanced along the nave and reached the 
crossing. The screen brightened up. Foreground displayed a 
sumptuous study with mahogany paneling and furniture. In the 
background bulldozers were moving into the tropical forest. 
Trees were falling, along with monkeys that had climbed for 
safety. Lumberjacks were catching the small ones. Their 
mothers trying to defend them were dismembered with chain 
saws.

-Not my fault. I only ordered a decoration.- the niche 
reflected and vocalized the thoughts of the man at the 
crossing. -It's the loggers. But for them the decorator 
would chose for me another material.- 
A pause.
-No, I'm lying. It's demand that creates supply. It's 
consumers' fault. My fault.- 
A longer pause.
-Maybe I can atone by reincarnating as each of these monkeys 
and living through their agony; as each of the natives hunted 
out or killed; as any man or beast affected by deforestation.-

Another man moved to the crossing. Foreground showed him 
drive by an organic farm to a supermarket to buy viands, 
slightly cheaper than at the farm. Background showed 
thousands of 14-inch-square mesh cages with six hens packed 
in each. Beaks were cut off with hot irons. Some were kept 
18 days in the dark, without water, to shock them into 
another egg laying cycle. Most finished their lives thrown 
into grinders. Equally gruesome torture was applied to 
calves, hogs and other factory raised animals. Many 
contracted contagious diseases. Waste from factory farms 
contaminated groundwater, aquifers and rivers.  
-I'll atone,- vocalized the niche -I'll reincarnate as each 
tortured factory animal. And as every person poisoned by 
contaminated food and polluted water.-

And elegant ladies in seal coats sought redemption by living 
the agony of all massacred baby seals and their mothers. 
And maniacs using ground rhinoceros horns as aphrodisiacs 
sought forgiveness by living a priapic agony for each killed 
animal. And hundreds of apparently decent, honorable people 
took responsibility for tortured animals, for exterminated 
humans, for ravaged earth and implored redemption through 
self-imposed merciless sentences.


3. THE DAWN


The sun emerged from behind the crests like a triumphal 
symphony and spread its splendor over the serene waters of 
the lake. And I knew the answer, dazzling, clear and obvious. 
There is nothing to teach. Learn we must. Learn together to 
listen to our consciences, for so long buried, buried under 
tons of garbage.