Memory lapse. The fact Owen Jones is cosplaying as having a moral compass is wild - he missed out a chapter on how he has played a major part in the shit show we see today. And has done for a number of years. Owen is not fooling anyone. Even the indies he plagiarised from.
Owen, I think I’ve spent the last few years writing adjacent versions of the same essay you keep writing, which is either a sign of intellectual convergence or a very niche form of collective madness.
I share a great deal of your diagnosis. The scapegoating, the hollowing out, the obscene concentration of wealth and power, the way people who have been failed materially are encouraged to direct their anger at migrants, minorities, the poor, anyone except the people and structures actually making the decisions — all of that feels deeply familiar to me.
But strangely, even in the middle of that sadness, I don’t feel entirely hopeless.
Part of the reason is people like you. There are still people in the West who believe that human dignity is not conditional — not on income, nationality, usefulness, respectability, or whether someone happens to be politically convenient. The dignity of working people matters. The dignity of migrants matters. The dignity of marginalized people matters. The dignity of the person everyone has decided to blame this week matters.
And you have defended those people consistently, often when it would have been much easier not to.
I write a lot about decline, and one thing I keep coming back to is how easily we confuse decline with apocalypse. Apocalypse is oddly comforting. It gives us a dramatic ending and, perhaps more importantly, lets us imagine ourselves as the exceptionally cursed generation standing at the end of history. Very flattering, really.
But decline is much more ordinary than that. Empires decline. Political orders exhaust themselves. Institutions decay. New equilibria emerge. History is absolutely littered with civilizations convinced they were uniquely doomed.
The question is not simply whether the West declines. It is what comes out of that decline.
And I still think there is enormous possibility here: new forms of solidarity, new ways of organizing economic life, new institutions, a less imperial relationship with the rest of the world, and perhaps even the radical discovery that a society does not have to humiliate its own working class in order to function.
Where I particularly value your work is that my own instinct is usually to climb to 30,000 feet and start muttering about empire, civilization, technology, dignity and the moral architecture of modernity — which is all very enjoyable until someone reasonably asks, “Yes, but what actually happened?”
That’s where journalists like you matter.
You go back down into the documents, the numbers, the individual cases, the policy decisions, the contradictions. You do the patient work of establishing what is actually true. And that makes the larger argument infinitely stronger.
So I think we are often looking at the same landscape from different altitudes. I’m usually staring at the weather system. You are also checking who left the window open.
I’m very grateful for that.
And for whatever it’s worth, I think there is still light in the middle of all this — not because decline isn’t real, but because human beings are still capable of solidarity, invention, courage, humor and love.
That seems like a reasonably good set of raw materials to begin again with.
The damage done - since before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution - the century following, and in the era you describe has been to concentrate wealth in the hands of the least desirable and most unpleasant specimens of H. sapiens, and it is irrevocable.
The planet has been so badly ruined that collapse is inevitable.
What will rise from the ashes remains to be seen but few alive now will see it as so many will die.
The damage done - since before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution - the century following, and in the era you describe has been to concentrate wealth in the hands of the least desirable and most unpleasant specimens of H. sapiens, and it is irrevocable.
The planet has been so badly ruined that collapse is inevitable.
What will rise from the ashes remains to be seen but few alive now will see it as so many will die.
Really looking forward to this book and can’t wait to get stuck in. Thank you, Owen for helping to keep me sane in a world gone mad.
I liked the preface very much. And the video was just plain heartbreaking. Good work, Owen.
Memory lapse. The fact Owen Jones is cosplaying as having a moral compass is wild - he missed out a chapter on how he has played a major part in the shit show we see today. And has done for a number of years. Owen is not fooling anyone. Even the indies he plagiarised from.
Stop talking stoopid
'The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism' - Hannah Arendt
Owen, I think I’ve spent the last few years writing adjacent versions of the same essay you keep writing, which is either a sign of intellectual convergence or a very niche form of collective madness.
I share a great deal of your diagnosis. The scapegoating, the hollowing out, the obscene concentration of wealth and power, the way people who have been failed materially are encouraged to direct their anger at migrants, minorities, the poor, anyone except the people and structures actually making the decisions — all of that feels deeply familiar to me.
But strangely, even in the middle of that sadness, I don’t feel entirely hopeless.
Part of the reason is people like you. There are still people in the West who believe that human dignity is not conditional — not on income, nationality, usefulness, respectability, or whether someone happens to be politically convenient. The dignity of working people matters. The dignity of migrants matters. The dignity of marginalized people matters. The dignity of the person everyone has decided to blame this week matters.
And you have defended those people consistently, often when it would have been much easier not to.
I write a lot about decline, and one thing I keep coming back to is how easily we confuse decline with apocalypse. Apocalypse is oddly comforting. It gives us a dramatic ending and, perhaps more importantly, lets us imagine ourselves as the exceptionally cursed generation standing at the end of history. Very flattering, really.
But decline is much more ordinary than that. Empires decline. Political orders exhaust themselves. Institutions decay. New equilibria emerge. History is absolutely littered with civilizations convinced they were uniquely doomed.
The question is not simply whether the West declines. It is what comes out of that decline.
And I still think there is enormous possibility here: new forms of solidarity, new ways of organizing economic life, new institutions, a less imperial relationship with the rest of the world, and perhaps even the radical discovery that a society does not have to humiliate its own working class in order to function.
Where I particularly value your work is that my own instinct is usually to climb to 30,000 feet and start muttering about empire, civilization, technology, dignity and the moral architecture of modernity — which is all very enjoyable until someone reasonably asks, “Yes, but what actually happened?”
That’s where journalists like you matter.
You go back down into the documents, the numbers, the individual cases, the policy decisions, the contradictions. You do the patient work of establishing what is actually true. And that makes the larger argument infinitely stronger.
So I think we are often looking at the same landscape from different altitudes. I’m usually staring at the weather system. You are also checking who left the window open.
I’m very grateful for that.
And for whatever it’s worth, I think there is still light in the middle of all this — not because decline isn’t real, but because human beings are still capable of solidarity, invention, courage, humor and love.
That seems like a reasonably good set of raw materials to begin again with.
Your optimism is misplaced.
The damage done - since before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution - the century following, and in the era you describe has been to concentrate wealth in the hands of the least desirable and most unpleasant specimens of H. sapiens, and it is irrevocable.
The planet has been so badly ruined that collapse is inevitable.
What will rise from the ashes remains to be seen but few alive now will see it as so many will die.
Hope now, is only for dreamers.
Your optimism is misplaced.
The damage done - since before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution - the century following, and in the era you describe has been to concentrate wealth in the hands of the least desirable and most unpleasant specimens of H. sapiens, and it is irrevocable.
The planet has been so badly ruined that collapse is inevitable.
What will rise from the ashes remains to be seen but few alive now will see it as so many will die.
Hope now is only for dreamers.
Can someone tell Penguin their mobile website can’t cope