There is a new play in London’s West End at the moment. It’s called The Standard of Living by James Graham . The play is about the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes . Graham thinks that Keynes offers an alternative to our money-making profit-led society. “I’m absolutely convinced of that. You always feel that you have to fight for it but most people from my post-industrial working class community accept the intellectual argument that he (Keynes) made all those years ago; that [there should be] subsidy on something that doesn’t instantly make direct profit back, a painting, a play, a ballet, a song, that doesn’t have a value that is easily quantified on an Excel spreadsheet but adds to the value of a nation and to the meaning and happiness of it.” But unfortunately, we live in a world where ‘money, purchases and success’ dominate. Indeed, seats for Graham’s play are going for up to £298 (or nearly $400) – although there are some for the under-30s at ju...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51