"Our True Nationality is Mankind" H G Wells
Globalisation, Nationalism & Migration - Futures
Have capitalism and technology stripped us of our common humanity? In an age of crisis, Paul Mason calls for a new humanism. Through the screens of our smart devices, corporations and governments know what we’re doing, what we're thinking, can predict our next moves and influence our behaviour. We, meanwhile, don't even have the right to know that any of this is going on. As Paul Mason argues, all this is intimately connected to the urgent economic, political and moral crises we are living through now.
His new book 'Clear Bright Future' explores how, during the preceding decades, the free-market system reduced us to two dimensional consumers, genetics stripped us of our belief in humans as agents of change. Underlying the dominance of these forces, Mason contends, is the idea that human values no longer have foundation - an idea that, as we allow the all pervasive presence of machines in our lives, we are tacitly coming to accept. And, if these forces are not stopped, we will relive something even worse than the 1930s.
But there is another way. We have the power to imagine and design a better system, at the heart of which is a radical reassertion of our common humanity. All this, Mason asserts, starts with a simple, fundamental choice. Will we accept the machine control of human beings, or will we resist it?
Paul Mason is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and filmmaker. Previously economics editor of Channel 4 News, his books include 'PostCapitalism, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: the New Global Revolutions'; 'Live Working Die Fighting'; and' Rare
Earth: A Novel'.
This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Book Festival in memory of Nick Spurrier.
Event chaired by Ed Siddons.
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