Is the "Great Reset" great?

I had a thought yesterday morning about The Great Reset that has been much discussed in the past six months, and decided I needed to get some more background on it—to know what I was talking about when I referred to it. The process has had some interesting steps:

  • The World Economic Forum website and Klaus Schwab’s view of the brokenness of today’s economy; especially the need to re-envision capitalism to be more humane, greener, and sustainable; and his gratitude for the pandemic that provides the perfect excuse to spring this new world order on the nations that are excited about the power-enhancing features for the governments that embrace/advance it. Explicit assumptions that the world will be dead and sterile in 50 years if we don’t solve the environmental crisis. Lots of great propaganda there.
  • Time magazine website with its special edition of articles that pay homage to the WEF vision of the new world order. The perfect blend of how the Great Reset resonates with BLM, the latest new green initiatives and the advance of the socialist agenda (including the end of private property although that’s between the lines…). More propaganda.
  • An article by a Catholic professor of theology on the First Things website titled “The Only Great Reset”: a response to what he considers the failures of the secular, humanistic perspective informing the propaganda around this new popular idea and its applications. The incarnation of Jesus is the only great reset, Dr. C. C. Pecknold asserts, and he references Pope Pius XI encyclical of 1925 that established the Feast of Christ the King as a response to the failures of social and political movements to bring greater freedom the world.
  • A news article from The Hill on how Biden will go whole hog with the Great Reset thanks to his appointment of John Kerry as his environmental czar.
  • Other news articles, especially the National Review article titled, “The Great Reset: If Only It Were Just a Conspiracy”  that is a riff on a Spectator article that tears apart the assumption that this could be a good thing for those who hope for freedom. Both articles focus on the real foundation of this concept: corporatism, or the powerful coalition of government and business, to advance the interests of the ruling coalition; people can’t be trusted to make such important choices.
  • An opinion piece from Bitcoin.com titled, “A Look at the 'Fascist' Agenda Behind the 'Great Reset' and the WEF's Reboot Propaganda.” In this article, the author references a blogpost reprinted on the WEF website by Ida Auken, a Danish member of parliament. Auken’s sentiments in the piece are summarized, “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better” (that’s the actual page title!).

All of which brings up some fundamental ideas to consider/reconsider:

  • Is capitalism bad? Good? Neither? Both?
  • Are private property and privacy good? Bad?
    • The assertions made by the WEF noted above have triggered lots of concern. Yesterday the Mises Institute news site published a long article: “No Privacy, No Property: The World in 2030 According to the WEF.” It questions all the assumptions of the new world order, especially the private property and leadership of this structure.
    • All of which have great implications on our idea of personal liberty. The Mises article notes the assumptions of a coming bioengineering goal of immortality and the need to eliminate ‘undesirables’ from the gene pool. It links to an article on the Smithsonian website that investigates Nicola Tesla’s eugenics beliefs; which, in turn, links to a CSU Sacramento webpage (now dead) describing their 2005 symposium on eugenics in California: “From Eugenics to Designer Babies: Engineering the California Dream".  The stale page I found has this statement describing the reason for the conference:
      • “Early in the last century, the scientific trend of genetic selection and "better" reproduction - dubbed "eugenics" - led to support of practices such as involuntary sterilization, immigrant restriction and racially biased IQ testing. California's state government authorized about one-third of the 60,000 sterilizations in the United States from 1910 to 1970.”
    • The ditch on the other side of the ‘private property’ road is the hoarding disorder…
  • What is the function of government? To advance individual liberties or advance the group? The California eugenics example above is a cautionary tale.
  • What’s the point at which we are no longer individuals, but just members of a group?
  • Communism seems to me to devalue individuality and make the proletariat the preeminent component of society, focusing on collectivism. Libertarianism is, I think, the opposite of that, at least in the U.S., focusing on individualism.
  • How does the Kingdom of God factor into any/all of these political/social structures? 
    • Yahweh is sovereign, yes, but he doesn’t act like a totalitarian dictator (otherwise we’d all be marching in lock-step according to his dictates; instead, we humans all struggle to come to a meaningful shared interpretation of what a sustainable group structure should/could be). This is why our religion is faith based rather than the full-on social experience of a totalitarian dictator with its enforcement structures.
      • Some Christian traditions emphasize the authoritarian aspect of God’s character; others don’t. The authoritarians see bad karma as evidence of God’s judgment and seem to suggest that angels will be heaven’s Gestapo. I like Bickle’s assessment of Jesus’ return: Jesus will remove everything that hinders love.
    • The ekklesia is a group of individuals who have been called out from their homes to deliberate, to function as a community, an assembly. This gets close to collectivism, but the fact of being called out is a function of a supreme leader (“You got called, too? So did I”). Once we gather together, we share our experiences and understanding of our ‘calling’ and begin the complicated process of assigning meaning to the cryptic messages we’ve all heard. This leads to more or less structure of the community. Acts 2 and 4 lead to the Epistles which explicated the apostles’ beliefs of how that community should be shaped. Why were the letters necessary? Our human cultural traditions have typically been based on patriarchal and often tyrannical governments. Transition to the Kingdom of God on earth is likely to be tainted by our old habits of authoritarianism.

Marx’s political philosophy leads to the goal of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Alas, this concept is an oxymoron; it can't happen. Dictatorship is inherently a single person, or less likely (but possibly), a small group that dictates policy and practice in a nation state. Marx’s belief is a flawed philosophical construct that a group can behave as an individual, and exhibit qualities of an individual. (Isn’t this the same flawed concept that has made the legal definition of a corporation under Federal law to have the same privileges of a person?)

Yes, we need a great reset; but the shouting I hear from the stage isn't it.

______________________

Addendum: Oct. 20, 2021

https://youtu.be/KLQCDrzBlf0

Three days ago this video was posted of Catholic Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke making a presentation sometime in Dec. 2020. It is a statement/homily on the evils of the Great Reset, among other things.

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