Growth! What is it Good For?

I'm not really sure that anyone is qualified to pronounce on the current apparent crisis. I certainly am not and what I suspect about this is that as usual eventually for all of us will settle down to the standard situation - us in the west relatively well off and the rest of the world either mired in a swamp of fear and loathing or scrabbling to drag themselves up to the crowded pinnacle of Liberal Capitalism. For however much the admirers of Mrs T. and Mr R. say that the woolly hippies of the broadcast media and the statist minions have destroyed what made this country great, the gradual drift to a more caring and tolerant society cannot be reversed. I hear mutters of "believe that you'll believe anything".

I have a problem with growth which I suppose is the way that uber-capitalists - the receivers of bonuses beyond the dreams of any Biblical characters - justify their existence and their nasty ways and means. Of course here in this Shangri-la, on the whole we should be thankful that we don't have to walk miles for water or go hungry for more days than we don't. What follows is only a feeling and you would catch me out if you asked for evidence but I do wonder whether we would better off without struggling for growth for a bit. Some will say that human advances are the result of growth which provides cash and facilities for investigation and forward-thinking but in times of crisis maybe we should stop the mad paddling for a while and look at picking up those who fall in the wake of such messes. And then ensure that we remember what brought us so low in the first place.

I;m also not sure whether Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature has any of this in it and I'm reluctant to buy it at the moment after failing to get through the drier bits of a previous book by the man but a discussion between Pinker and a strange, woolly philosopher - Anthony O'Hear - on Thinking Allowed last week was intriguing and did suggest some of the above.

Anyway I have to end here after starting a long and tedious rant about advertising and the X-Factor which shows me up as the shallow, wannabe elitist that I really am.