I was searching for the ultimate reading of Ozymandias – to connect to the article on Creative vs Extractive Economies I posted yesterday. Listen to Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad – within which the arrogance of Ozymandias (and his ultimate end) was a major theme.
Ozymandias, King of Kings, “Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round that wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”
I do believe we are living in the age of Ozymandias again. The arrogance and lack of reverence for anything but money and power is in overdrive. I try to understand how this happened – this diminishing of perspective and meaning. I point to the bizarre scholasticism of neoliberal economics giving these Ozymandiases their head.
But it goes deeper than that. This is the end run of the “Modern” agenda – the mechanical, deterministic, predictable, certain reductionism of life to formulae – the legacy of Bacon & Descartes. And yet the world is not like this – our children, our communities, our workforces, our landscapes, our climate, our economies. They are complex, they adapt, they are subject to feedbacks and thresholds. They are unpredictable and uncertain, and …..
…. the more they are seen as a machine, and organised and controlled in that certain image … the more danger we have of bring on a devastating tipping point. They do not see tipping points. They do not see uncertainty. They believe in controllability. They believe themselves above the Trickster – the Mauis, Lokis & Coyotes of ancient wisdom.
We have allowed – by apathy or ignorance – the rise of the least wise. See them strut in their suits and think of them as door-to-door vacuum salespeople. Willy Lomax, made a Minister of the Crown.
Chris Perley