In times of generalised and cascading crises, everyone turns to the humanities – in particular the philosophers – for answers. While we all inhabit the algorithmic panopticon (controlled by private corporations), the larger questions of the humanities may seem irrelevant. If transnational corporations control the algorithms, they can successfully and heavily influence public consciousness.

However, if we dig a bit deeper, we will find that our current problems and issues we wrestle with have been the subject of extensive debate and analysis by philosophers.

Let’s examine this series of interconnected issues.

Reading The Plague by Camus in a time of pandemic

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the public’s initial reaction consisted of anxiety and fear about the future. In order to anchor our reactions to this pandemic and its societal impacts, sales of an old novel went through the roof in 2020. Albert Camus’ The Plague (La Pest), first published in English translation in 1948, the book centres on the city of Oran, in French Algeria.

Oran was hit by a plague, and Camus explores the quarantine of the city, the human consequences of the plague’s dissemination, and the struggle by doctors and health care professionals to deal with the influx of stricken patients. While the novel is set in the 1940s, Camus drew on the long history of epidemics in Oran, in particular the 1846 – 1860 cholera outbreak in that city.

Camus examines the social impact of the contagion, the resultants deaths and existential crisis in the town, the struggle by the authorities to limit the fatalities caused by the pandemic, and the sense of loss and inevitability gripping the town’s residents. These examinations resonate with people going through the current pandemic. Camus was a philosopher and novelist, not a scientist, yet he was able to capture the social and cultural experiences of living through a shattering event.

In a time of widespread crisis, a book published seventy years ago became the defining novel of the current pandemic. We go back to the humanities to find answers, provide an anchoring experience in an otherwise rudderless environment.

Indeed, if there is a criticism to be made of The Plague, it is the fact that Camus, in a glaring and possibly deliberate omission, did not include any Arab or Berber characters in his novel. Algeria was a French colony, and Camus failed to provide a view of the epidemic from an indigenous perspective.

Magee, Copleston and Schopenhauer

The late Bryan Magee (1930 – 2019) was an articulate and talented British philosopher, who presented the programme The Great Philosophers on the BBC. Broadcasting philosophy to the public, Magee reached a wide audience, and helped dummies like me understand the complex world of metaphysics, ontology, epistemology and logical positivism, among other things.

This was when I was going through my nineteenth century German philosophy phase. In many ways, I have never outgrown it, and I still go back to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer from time to time.

His talks, usually involving interviews with other subject matter experts, were always exceedingly polite, and I enjoyed listening to the Received Pronunciation on the television. That is what was called the Queen’s English back in the day. Make no mistake, this was the BBC-high culture version of a no-holds-barred, gladiatorial fight to the death contest between Magee and his interlocutor in the staid confines of a BBC studio.

Magee was an expert on Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860), a German philosopher known for his exploration of existentialism. He never described himself as such, but the questions he asked regarding existence, pessimism and the world as will and representation place him in the German idealist and existentialist camp.

Magee, in one of his many BBC broadcasts, had Fr. Frederick Copleston (1907 – 1994) on his programme to discuss Schopenhauer. They debated Schopenhauer’s ideas, his ethics and his characterisation of the observable phenomenal world as a manifestation of the irrational noumenal will. Whether Schopenhauer is right or wrong I do not know; but what I do know is that being immersed in such debates as a young university student in the 1980s was excellent training in tackling the large existential questions which we face today.

Human induced climate change, increasingly severe fires, floods and droughts, economic dislocations, ecological breakdown, rising alienation and loneliness, interethnic warfare and the rise of the ultranationalist Right are all part of a cascading series of crises giving rise to an existential crisis.

I do not have a grand blueprint to solve all of these interconnected problems. What I do realise is that with the decline of the humanities, and the rise of the digital panopticon, we have abandoned the ability to dive deeply into serious sociopolitical and cultural problems. Our short attention spans demand the next webpage, the next online click, the next TikTok video or Facebook reel.

Am I suggesting that all of us drop everything and read Schopenhauer? No, I am not. Am I suggesting that science is useless or unnecessary to make sense of the human condition? Of course not. To take one example, modern science has been absolutely indispensable in confronting a most serious cultural virus, racism. Tackling the pseudoscientific underpinnings of racism is essential in reclaiming our common humanity.

There needs to be a reversal in the decline of the humanities, and we must discard the view that social sciences are ‘not useful’. The decline in media literacy has made us ever more vulnerable to propaganda – what we euphemistically call public relations.

If you think AI is making philosophy and the humanities obsolete – think again. Philosophy was instrumental in the emergence of computing, quantifiable variables and supplementing human cognitive capabilities since the first time we began thinking about thinking.

It is not everyday that an obscure topic like the origins of the Indo-European languages gets mentioned in the news. A topic that requires the increasing cooperation of disparate fields such as ancient DNA, genetics, linguistics and archaeology does not make news headlines in our short-attention span commercial media culture. However, it was with great enthusiasm that I read a news article about advances in the debate regarding the origin of Indo-European languages.

As a person of Armenian background, I get asked about the language and where it comes from. Armenian is a branch of the Indo-European language family. About 40 percent of the world’s population speaks an Indo-European language. That family includes English, Russian Kurdish, Sanskrit, Latin – just to name a few.

Yes, another name for Indo-European is Aryan. No, it does not mean what you think it means. Aryans are not a race, let alone a blond-haired, blue-eyed ethnicity. No, the Nazis mangled archaeology and ancient history. The term Aryan refers to the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European family. No, it was never used to identify the entire collection of languages and peoples designated under the term Indo-European.

The French racist theorist, Arthur Gobineau (1816 – 1882) created an Aryan racial category to provide a pseudoscientific basis for his contention that human races were unequal. We all know who picked up on that invention and took it to the extreme.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, there have been numerous attempts to identify the origins of Indo-European languages. Two major scenarios have been put forward to provide an explanation. The Steppe hypothesis suggests that peoples north of the Black Sea, the Pontic-Caspian steppe lands, spread out from their homeland, and were the originators of the proto-Indo-European language. Their culture is known as the Kurgan culture.

The other compelling hypothesis is called the Anatolian. First formulated by the English archaeologist the late Colin Renfrew, the latter suggested that farmers on the Anatolian peninsula – present day Turkey – spread agricultural practices as they moved, and brought their Proto-Indo-European language with them.

Renfrew identified Neolithic Anatolia as the birthplace of the original Indo-European speakers. Hittite, an extinct language, was spoken by the farmers on the Anatolian peninsula. The Hittites, mentioned in the Old Testament, were an Indo-European people, and one of the first major civilisations in West Asia.

Which scenario is correct? That debate has simmered, and intermittently erupted with volcanic force, since the first attempts to identify the similarities between, and common origins of, words from different languages. The Dutch, and then the English, while on their colonising adventures from the 16th century onwards, noticed similarities between geographically distant languages.

For instance, English philologist and judge William Jones (1746 – 1794) noticed similarities between Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. He theorised that these languages must have had a common ancestral tongue. Earlier, Russian scientist and polymath Mikhail Lomonosov (1711 – 1765) compared different language groups – Slavic, Baltic, Finnish, Latin, Greek, Russian, German – and suggested a common ancestor for the languages of his day.

Comparative linguistics can only take you so far. The advent of ancient DNA analysis opened up a whole new avenue of investigation into the deep human past.

The Yamnaya culture, which occupied the Pontic Caspian steppe, was identical from ancient DNA as being the people who initially spread the original Indo-European language. However, the Hittites, the Anatolian branch of Indo-European speakers, did not have any Yamnaya DNA. Archaeologists know from cuneiform tablets that the Hittites spoke an Indo-European language. Was there another ancestral people that unites these disparate groups of ethnicities?

Recent DNA studies, examined by Carl Zimmer. NY Times science writer, identifies the Caucasus Lower Volga (CLV) people as the ancestors of the original Indo-European language. Being nomadic, they spread their agricultural practices and culture throughout the territories now comprising southern Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey.

The migration of the CLV people was not singular nor linear, but occurred in uneven waves. Some branches of the CLV people settled into a sedentary lifestyle, encouraged by the development of agriculture. The CLV people lived in a territory stretching from the Volga river to the Caucasus mountains about 7000 years ago.

The Black Sea and its environs forms a kind of Southern Arc of migratory channels. Branches of ancient peoples travelled to Armenia, the Balkans, Greece and Anatolia.

Before we definitively claim that the mystery of the origins of Indo-European languages is solved, let’s sound a word of caution. Perhaps I am demonstrating my inherently cautious disposition, but let’s remember one crucial fact – language dispersal and ancient DNA are not directly linked. Language is transmitted culturally and socially; DNA is obviously genetic.

If we are tracing the origins of blood groups, ancient DNA indicating migratory patterns would provide a firm tracing tool – blood types are determined by your genes. Language is socially transmitted. Human language is a distinctive feature of human culture. Animals certainly communicate, in many sophisticated ways, but they do not have words or language.

Yes of course, people who share DNA are related, and more likely to speak a shared language. Ancient DNA can resolve questions about ancient peoples and their intermixing. But language is a cultural transmission, and a person’s DNA does not nearly equate with the culture in which they are raised. It is in the intersections of life that we will find ultimate answers for our questions about language.

The US Agency for International Development (USAid) sounds innocuous and benevolent – a charity dispensing financial help to those in need overseas. Indeed, there are humanitarian programs within the purview of USAid, and the staff working on those initiatives are motivated by integrity and a genuine desire to help the less fortunate globally.

Being fair and reasonable regarding the financially helpful features of USAid programs should not blind us to the underlying reality – this organisation is an instrument of US soft power and regime change. Its top personnel have never been altruistic humanists, but cynical and politically calculating realists who have leveraged US assistance to the goals of extending American political and economic power.

No, this is not meant to intentionally sound conspiratorial, but rather encourage readers to engage in a critical analysis of the instruments and role of US soft power.

Forgive me for feeling schadenfreude at this moment; viewing the paroxysmal hysteria of centrist and liberal imperialist security state political tribes lamenting the shutdown of soft power regime vehicle of US foreign policy makes me smile.

Chris Hedges, long term activist and scholar, who can hardly be called a friend of the Trump-Musk-MAGA cult, wrote the following regarding US foreign aid:

Foreign aid is not benevolent. It is weaponized to maintain primacy over the United Nations and remove governments the empire deems hostile. Those nations in the U.N. and other multilateral organizations who vote the way the empire demands, who surrender their sovereignty to global corporations and the U.S. military, receive assistance. Those who don’t do not.

Founded in 1961 by former US President John Kennedy, USAid’s mission was always the soft power promotion of US capitalist power. Spending millions on NGOs, ‘independent’ media networks, and humanitarian programmes, USAid was an instrument of the cultural Cold War. US imperialism, in line with previous empires, does not rely exclusively on brute force to expand, but also through cultural domination.

Noam Chomsky understood, in the 1970s, that USAid is the friendly face of US soft power imperialism. Chomsky, a veteran leftist critic of US foreign policies, cannot be considered politically adjacent to the far right Trump administration, by no means. Yet, he understood and wrote about the machinations of USAid, stating that it was hard to know when official CIA influence ended, and USAid began, in nations targeted for regime change.

He wrote about his experiences in Laos, where USAid was directly contingent on Laotian ruling parties following US interests in the region. And Laos was not the only place where financial support came with strings attached. In the early 1990s, USAid promised to finance the rebuilding of the international airport at Port-au-Prince, with one condition; that Haiti vote against Cuba’s bid to become a member of the Organisation of American States (OAS). The Haitian authorities duly obliged.

We can all see the immediate and devastating consequences of cutting off USAid to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa. Recipients of humanitarian aid in Africa face famine, with crucial food supplies left undistributed in warehouses. HIV patients, millions in Nigeria for instance, rely on USAid-supported clinics to access antiretroviral treatment. Currently, 25.6 million people live with HIV/AIDS in Africa.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is still prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. Cutting of their access to medical treatments will only worsen the occurrence not only of HIV/AIDS, but also cholera, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases.

In fact, it is the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the World Health Organisation (WHO) which delivered the crucial blow to HIV patients health care in Africa. Canceling its international commitments and finance from the WHO represents a serious deterioration in health care provision both in the US and globally.

I am not oblivious to the unfolding humanitarian disaster which is a predictable consequence of shuttering USAid funding. It is not being heartless or cruel to recognise that USAid, far from being an innocuous charitable organisation, is a sharp spear in the effort of US soft power regime change. It is not just me saying this; leftist former President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, demanded that USAid be expelled from his nation in 2023, citing its role as an interventionist instrument of US foreign policy.

Former Bolivian president, the socialist and indigenous activist Evo Morales, expelled USAid from his country back in 2013, citing its role as a key financial of Bolivian right wing and oligarchic figures dedicated to the overthrow of his Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party. The MAS party has consistently opposed the exploitation of Bolivia’s natural resources by rapacious foreign (namely American) corporations, and defended the lives and welfare of the working class, the peasantry and indigenous people.

From 1996 until 2003, USAid was instrumental in funding, to the tune of millions of dollars, the seemingly benevolent Democratic Development and Citizen Participation programme in Bolivia. One of numerous NGOs funded by USAid overseas, it played a pivotal role in agitating against MAS.

The Trump administration, staffed by an assortment of MAGA cultists, religious fanatics, corporate leeches, Christian fascists and psychopaths, is engaging in a cannibalistic intra-security state warfare to cut government spending. Free market fundamentalism is what unites the MAGA cult. Any kind of government spending on social programmes is immediately denounced as ‘Communism.’ Indeed, Musk himself made this point clear, attacking USAid as being staffed by radical Marxists.

That is news to me. As Professor Vijay Prashad has stated, it is a viper’s nest of imperialists.

USAid has fallen victim to the relentless free market fanaticism of the MAGA cultist camp. Vilifying government spending for decades as a uniquely burdensome economic evil, whether it be on health care, education or scientific research, has now rebounded on the liberal imperialist segment of the US financial elite.

In Australia, the term ‘foreign aid’ gets a bad press. The underlying xenophobia of cutting Australia’s already measly contribution is rationalised with the simplistic claim ‘we should be helping Aussies’. Overhyped concerns about alleged corruption in foreign aid organisations divert the conversation from the fact that those who state ‘we should be helping Aussies’ do not help neither Australians nor the foreign-born.

Rather than lament the demise of USAid, let’s focus our energies on countering the oligarchic policies which continue to impoverish the majority of the world’s population; unceasing overseas wars, foolish spending on harebrained military fantasies, and the merging of IT tech companies with global surveillance.

It is curious and oddly funny in a way to watch multiple mainstream media outlets sanitise the Nazi salute given by Elon Musk at the post-inauguration ceremony of US President Donald Trump.

No, it was not a Nazi salute, we are assured, but a ‘Roman’ one….no, it was because Musk got overexcited due to autism…..no, he was indicating the height of the trees in his backyard…..no, he was signalling the arrival of his Uber.

Are we supposed to believe that Musk Nazi salute was just a case of an eccentric making a nervous twitch arm movement? Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, a Canadian doctor with Nazi sympathies, moved to apartheid South Africa in the 1950s. Becoming active in supporting white supremacy, Haldeman denounced the hordes of coloured people who, controlled by an international cabal of Jewish bankers, intended to overwhelm the white Christian civilisation of South Africa. Statements like these are hardly the product of a nonpolitical arm twitch.

No, we cannot visit the sins of the grandparents onto the grandchildren, but Musk grew up in an environment with unmistakable fascist sympathies. The grandparents made white supremacist rants in the age before social media.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, named after the Polish-born lawyer of Jewish background who first coined the word genocide, issued a red flag warning for the United States, urging all of us to exercise skepticism when it comes to attempts to whitewash or explain away Musk’s supposedly awkward hand gesture.

We cannot lightly dismiss an unmistakable gesture indicating support for, and boosting, an antisemitic genocidal ideology as just an unfortunate accident. This was not the sadly unintended antics of a publicity-seeking egomaniac. Musk is very close to the Trump administration, influencing its economic, technological and civil policies.

When Musk was a rising star of the IT/Silicon Valley complex, touting electric cars as an environmentally friendly replacement for the polluting and outdated internal combustion engine, numerous favourable comparisons were made between him and Henry Ford, founding father of Ford Motor Company.

Henry Ford (1867 – 1943) was an industrialist and car manufacturer famous, not for inventing the petroleum engine itself, but making it affordable to millions of working class and middling Americans. His innovative production techniques, today collectively known as Fordism, revolutionised not only the automotive industry, but also factory production generally. Fordism provided the template for automotive manufacturing, and this impacted production techniques across manufacturing industries in the twentieth century.

The availability and ubiquity of the household car can be attributed to the widespread success of Fordism. However, let’s also remember another vital reason for the general use of the motor car; the deliberate running down of electric-based transportation, including public trams and trains.

Automotive and oil companies, starting in the 1940s, deliberately gained control of public transit systems to run them down. Enforced decrepitude of public transport only encouraged consumers to rely on motor vehicles. Creating a market for your product is just as important as technological innovation in persuading people to purchase your product.

In Sydney and Adelaide, the extensive networks of electric trams were ripped out to make way for the now ubiquitous motor vehicle.

Musk’s purchase of Tesla corporation back in 2008 was greeted with enthusiasm by industry commentators. Just as Henry Ford revolutionised automotive assembly line production in the early twentieth century, it was hoped that Musk’s energetic commitment to electric cars would similarly revolutionise the car market, heralding the move away from the petroleum-based engine.

Comparisons between Ford and Musk were made, and they were usually favourable. However, the similarities between the two industrialists is not what most media commentators would have us believe.

Both men were/are critical agents of industrial and economic change in their respective eras – that much is true. Although we have to add a caveat here; the electric car is gradually superseding the internal combustion engine, but not due to any innovation by Musk, but because of the robust commitment by China to move away from fossil fuel dependence.

Strong government subsidies for electric vehicle production, cheaper prices, and lithium battery support has made China the global leader in EV sales.

Be that as it may, there is a strong similarity between the two car manufacturers – and it is not complimentary. Both entrepreneurs are allowing (in the case of Ford, did allow) antisemitic conspiracy theories, prejudice and support for ultranationalist racist parties to dominate their lives. Ford, a dedicated antisemite and supporter of the Nazi party, used his financial power to circulate anti-Jewish racism, buying space in newspapers to publish articles promoting Nazi-adjacent ideology.

Elon Musk, the preeminent car manufacturer of our era, is walking down the same ultrarightist pathway. Expressing support for the far right Alternative for Germany party (AfD), Musk has platformed attacks against multiculturalism, denouncing what he calls the ‘woke mind virus’. The AfD, a vehemently anti-immigrant organisation, traces its ideological lineage to the Nazi party.

The techbro of Silicon Valley once hailed as an ecologically responsible progressive entrepreneur, has revealed himself to be the purveyor of ultranationalist grievance politics, directing resentment at the gains made by civil rights and migrant organisations for racial and educational equality. In this regard, Musk is adopting the same culturally and politically reactionary role that Ford played in his era.

A star addicted to fame and publicity, fellow MAGA cult follower Kanye West can be considered an appropriate parallel example to Musk. West, about whom I have written before, is obsessed with being in the spotlight. Musk definitely enjoys being the centre of attention, that is for sure. However, Musk has gone further than Kanye, and clearly chosen to align his politics with the inhabitants today’s ultrarightist cesspit.

Musk and Ford demonstrate that billionaires are not only conspiracy peddlers, harmful as that is. They also provide validation and political support for the anti-immigrant and fascist movements. The billionaire class provides a conveyor belt for the neoliberal white supremacist Right. Musk and Ford do not want to abolish government spending, they re-engineer the state’s functions to make the economy conducive to the conduct of big business.