Ignorance is bliss
In the spirit of my previous post, the former president of the World Bank James Wolfensohn comments on the 'anti-globalisation' protesters:
When you see someone outside a barricade attacking you vehemently because of something called globalization, you have to wonder what it is they're getting at. It enrages me when you have people who assume they have the moral high ground against a team of people here who are devoting their lives to addressing the very questions that these people claim to be addressing.
The excerpt is from PBS's video documentary Commanding Heights - The Battle for the World Economy (click here to watch the video).
So what are the protestors getting at? Self-righteous anger is beneficial to those in the barricades: they enjoy the 'warm glow' effect from feeling they are helping to make the world a better place, while bearing none of the costs of looking into the issues and trying to make sense of often mundane - but critical - realities.
While there are definitely a multitude of problems with the way the IMF, the World Bank or the G7 operate, the 'anti-globalisation lobby' seems to be protesting at little else than 'the poverty of the human condition' itself. From an individual point of view, this makes perfect sense. From the point of view of society as a whole, it is catastrophic.
