Glimpses of the Multipolar World, 13 May 2023

The unknown reader, master or emissary? émigré, День Робеды, reader competition, El Salvador, and a ton of pods.

Each week in my newsletter, I offer seven glimpses for seven days of the multipolar world. This week, I share glimpses of:

1. Gratitude. The unknown reader.

2. Reading. The master, the emissary, the poet.

3. Governing the Multipolar World. The émigré and the bureaucrat

4. Using History Mindfully. Victory Day

5. Fragments of the Burning Archive. Your favourite glimpses from the podcast

6. What surprised me most. Zero murders in El Salvador

7. Works-in-Progress. 100th podcast episode, and final proof of next book.

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1. Gratitude 

I am thankful for my readers, listeners and viewers, especially those wonderful, kind readers who are unknown to me except through their internet personas. The strange life of the solitary author would be impossible without imagined conversations with the unknown reader.

2. What I am reading 

I read Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (2009), Adam Tooze, Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy (2021), an excellent substack piece by Tooze on how the 2023 financial problems differ from the 2008 crisis, and some essays and poems of Marina Tvetaeva (1892-1941), the great Russian poet, collected in Art and the Light of Conscience. A strange mix, true, but that is the life of my strange mind.

From McGilchrist, I glimpsed how the biases of our brains, reinforced by the work of our cultures, have contributed to the “increased virtuality” of our lives.

Tooze has invested deeply in the left hemisphere world of economic history and finance. But I think he is the best guide to the economic crises of the multipolar world today. From Tooze, Shutdown I gained this insight into the disintegrating American state.

“For all the enthusiasm surrounding the early months of the Biden administration [dramatic irony?], the haunting question remains: Is the United States as a nation-state capable of responding in a coherent and long-term fashion to the challenges of the great acceleration?” (p. 301)

I will reflect on his substack piece on the tale of two financial crises next week, since it relates to using history to live mindfully in the present.

Finally, Tsvetaeva offered a model of prose. She suffered like many as a result of the 1917 Revolution, and lived during the 1920s among the exiled or émigré Russians. In the essay, “Poet and Time”, she wrote,

“Every poet is essentially an émigré … [who bears] a particular mark of discomfort; by which you’ll know him even in his own home. An émigré from immortality in time, a non-returner to his own heaven.” (Art and the Light of Conscience, p. 93)

3. Governing the unruly multipolar world

Between poetry and power, there lies the shadow. You could say this sums up my experience as a bureaucrat. I have had a foot in both camps, or shuttled ceaselessly between both camps during my whole working life. Neither side trusted me fully. Both sides declared me persona non grata at times. I became a stateless writer. I was exiled at home. As poet, like Tsvetaeva wrote, I was always an émigré. Bureaucrats, you would think, are never émigrés, and always insiders. But this bureaucrat was always an émigré too. In the end, I came to accept this fate. I discovered that in the shadows you can view more clearly the many ways of governing the world.

I have realised, in editing my writings on government for 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, that my experience as a lowly official, in a minor provincial government, in an outer reach of the American Empire, is not narrow, local, petty, domestic and without insight. Just as you can see the universe in a grain of sand, so you can understand how to govern the unruly multipolar world by looking at this broken bureaucrat, from many perspectives.

4. Using history to live mindfully in the present. 

During the week I watched live the ceremonies in Moscow for Victory Day, День Робеды. Vladimir Putin gave an important speech, which concluded,

“[in] appreciation of the feat of our ancestors: they fought and won together since all the peoples of the USSR contributed to our common Victory. We will always remember that. We bow our heads in cherished memory of those who lost their lives during the war, the memory of sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, husbands, wives, sisters and friends.”

I disregard mainstream Western media coverage of Russia entirely these days. Its ignorance of history is profound and dangerous. For example, this week the Whitehouse spokesperson said “the US and its allies” defeated Nazism. The spokesperson is ignorant of some big facts. 27 million, or more, citizens of the Soviet Union sacrificed their lives to defeat Nazism, and they knew that Hitler aimed to enslave, if not exterminate, their country. 14 million Chinese citizens died in the struggle against Japan, and then the American elites squabbled over “who lost China” and how they could win it back through a dictatorship in Taiwan. I recall the presence of grief, memory and inner strength at the Russian war memorials when I visited on my travels. Perhaps a few American politicians should go humbly to Red Square, and seek forgiveness from the ghosts of the Soviet Union?

This ignorance is dangerous, and reflects an assumption of Western or American impunity. Earlier in the speech, Putin said,

We believe that any ideology of superiority is abhorrent, criminal and deadly by its nature. However, the Western globalist elites keep speaking about their exceptionalism, pit nations against each other and split societies, provoke bloody conflicts and coups, sow hatred, Russophobia, aggressive nationalism, destroy family and traditional values which make us human. They do all that so as to keep dictating and imposing their will, their rights and rules on peoples, which in reality is a system of plundering, violence and suppression.

They seem to have forgotten what the Nazis’ insane claims of global dominance led to. They forgot who destroyed that monstrous, total evil, who stood up for their native land and did not spare their lives to liberate the peoples of Europe.

Impunity leads to tragedy. Humility might save the world again from cruel fantasies of world dominion.

5. Fragments from the Burning Archive

On the podcast this week, I did my 100th edition! I also announced a reader/listener “competition” or participation exercise. Substack subscribers are welcome to join in.

There are two optional questions for you to respond to:

1. What is your favourite episode on the Burning Archive podcast backlist, and why?

2. What is a ‘fragment of the Burning Archive’ (a cultural or historical artefact meaningful to you and the times) that you would like featured on the podcast?

The podcast includes snippets of three of my favourite episodes on Beowulf, Norse myths and Ezra Pound.

I am going to keep this ‘competition’ open to 30 June 2023, and am looking forward to your ideas.

You can submit your ideas in response to the Substack chat thread or comments on the newsletter, on my YouTube channel community page, on twitter, via email (theburningarchive@gmail.com), or via a voice message on Spotify.

I will do a video interpretation of three backlist podcasts, chosen by the best responses on the favourite episode.

And I will do audio podcasts on three - or at least three! - of your ideas for fragments from the Burning Archive.

There will be a small number of prizes (within my limited means) and hopefully lots of fun and engagement with you, dear readers. Let’s have some slow, high-brow fun!

I am going to provide a summary guide to my entire podcast backlist in my paid-subscribers only post on Monday.

6. What surprised me most this week. 

The El Salvador Government reported this week that it had reduced the murder rate to zero. Previously, it had one of the highest murder rates in the world. I don’t know how they did it, but surely this is a welcome surprise and an instructive achievement. Perhaps those American leaders, who will go humbly to Moscow to seek forgiveness, should book a flight to San Salvador and earnestly conduct a study tour.

7. Works-in-progress and published content

This week my works-in-progress and published content were:

• on the podcast I published Episode 100.

• On the YouTube Channel I did my first live stream, focussed on the derangement of the American Mind, and deepening the discussion of that theme in diplomacy, economy and leadership. You can watch the replay here.

• I got my final proof draft of 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat ready and printed it out today for a couple of weeks of review. The last lap begins.

• On Twitter, I shared a quote from Tsvetaeva, a quote from McGilchrist, and, in response to a tweet that pitted Libertarianism and Conservatism as the heroic opponents of Nazism and Communism, I described all four systems as “four seasons of broken authority”

Next week…

On Monday, the next subscriber-only, fortnightly post comes out. It will provide a summary guide to my entire podcast backlist to help you choose your favourite - or least favourite - episodes.

On Tuesday on Youtube, I will do my next Livestream (May 16, 12.30pm AEST) on the theme of the democracy’s discontents. I will share what I am reading and writing on this topic, and will respond to viewer questions and comments.

I will complete another article for submission elsewhere.

I will be getting my online courses ready for launch.

On Friday on the podcast, will reflect on my experience as a minor government official in the domain of mental health, and explore why governments consistently fail people with mental illness and they who care for them.

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And do remember, “What thou lovest well will not be reft from thee” (Ezra Pound, Cantos)