“For thorns also have flowers: some actions truly seem rough, seem savage; howbeit they are done for discipline at the bidding of charity. Once for all, then, a short precept is given you: Love, and do what you will: whether you hold your peace, through love hold your peace; whether you cry out, through love cry out; whether you correct, through love correct; whether you spare, through love do you spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.”

Homily 7 on the First Epistle of John (Augustine).

Image from Parabellum.

Latest obvious failure of humanitarian warfare, being the enforced attack on Libya. While the biggest lesson learned from this particular campaign might perhaps lie in never trusting a politician, particularly if he happens to be french, amusing as it may be, a more truthful approach would perhaps be to do away with the phrase, “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”.

Governments rushed to acknowledge the rag tag collection of highly dubious groups and individuals in the media popularly called “the rebels” (later dubbed “National Transitional Council”, NTC), as the official replacement regime in Libya – despite evidence describing the NTC highly unsuitable for the task. Notable exception in this case have been the Czechs who have been displaying a healthy amount of skepticism throughout the entire event. In the end, and despite better judgment, perhaps it was decided that any force, would be better than the universally loathed Gadhafi.

Perhaps, some of the motive might have even been that of a western revenge on a dictator who not only never played by the rules, but made fools of the leaders of the West, time and time again. Not very surprising perhaps; in the global pissing games of politicians, one should not expect fair treatment. Especially having waived the rights to it by flouting the rules of the game on so many occasions. Gadhafi has been a thorn in the side of every easily provoked political diva for the last forty odd years.

But as it turns out, popular support for the NATO-led fiasco dwindles – with Europe experiencing huge problems of her own, the dictator is more or less still in power – and the agents of war, who so fervently rushed to protect the people of Libya (in spite of not having a clear picture of who these people even might be), are pulling out one by one while stating quiet apologies in the name of resources and repairs (Norway, France). In other words, the proud defenders of humanity are scurrying home with tails between their legs having their hides near-skinned off their backs once more by a pesky dictator. So much for defending the human.

They are hoping, perhaps, that since public memory is short in nature, few, if any, will notice what has in fact been going on. France rushed to invade Libya mainly due to Sarkozy’s upcoming re-election. The french are doing very poorly at the moment and with Sarkozy’s dismal approval ratings, he needed an easy win. A swift crucifixion of the Evil does wonders in public – a tactic practiced in Europe since the middle ages, perhaps longer. NATO, on it’s behalf, another waning and dying concept, needed, together with the rest of the EU – to finally show some common resolution and hard initiative. Something, anything, that would prove to the rising force that is Russia, that they are still a power to be reckoned with and not the bickering lot of restless nations in want of a coherent strategy. The U.S, being the U.S, can be goaded into any a conflict as long as it can be argued to be in line with current interests. Even so – over invested in war theatres elsewhere, they engaged unwillingly and wanted nothing more than to hand over command to the Europeans, as fast as possible.

The war was to be precise. And short. The aim? Overtly to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe – but underhandedly, to remove Gadhafi from power. During the course of events, Gadhafi was in a spectacularly foolish move made the target of the campaign, formally charged by the ICC (International Criminal Court, a curious institution formed to prosecute war criminals, somewhat akin to the spectacle of public executions). This move, of course, removed Gadhafi’s sole incentive for surrender. If anything, hardening his resolve for a fight to the death. The ICC seldom delivers on its promise of fair treatment and no doubt Gadhafi was aware that Slobodan Milosevic ended his campaign in Yugoslavia with a promise from the ICC not to be prosecuted. As it turns out, prosecuted he was.

Four months into this “precise” humanitarian campaign, there is little doubt that there is no such thing as a truly humanitarian war. What on the other hand is clear, is that Europe has once more failed and put up a show of terrible politics at a very high cost – with few, if any, gains. Talk of intervention on the part of the Libyan people has been quiet indeed. There are even reports to the contrary where NATO air strikes are rumored to have killed the very Libyan civilians that they aim to protect. If true, hardly a surprise – wars incur collateral damage, such is their nature. Particularly so if the opponent plays dirty. It is conceivable that Gadhafi might have intentionally placed civilians at strategic points as human shields.

At its theoretical best, a humanitarian war is an effort to build, or re-build a nation. Though, in theory, a humanitarian war effort is supposed to be neutral, nothing can be further from the truth.

If one engages in a conflict, one takes a side – in this case the side of the weaker party. To claim anything else is shameful media rhetoric. The narrative has been to establish a democracy, much like the narrative has been for the rest of the failed Arab Spring. And failed it is, because even if it has brought on change, none of it has in deed and fact been very significant. In fact, some of the intended dreams of democracy might have even plunged into a further abyss of political instability. The dream of democracy is a European one, their greatest export, and European desire for democracy usually clouds European judgement to the point where any world event is viewed from behind its perverse and very obscure, thick-set glasses. Perhaps democracy itself is a form of humanitarian war? Or a form of terrorism?

Even though Gadhafi might still lose, it is far less likely than what was heralded in the opening salvos of the campaign. Media reports are media reports – but the facts speak for themselves. NATO is, in spite of the ICC, preparing a political exit and is talking of a negotiated settlement with Gadhafi’s regime, or what remains of it. Hardly something one would consider if one is sure to win. Settlements are the hallmarks of a broken confidence and lost initative.

And even if the regime were to fall: What then? The West has an incredibly poor track record of establishing democracies in war torn zones. The costly and disastrous events following the war on Iraq is a textbook example of this. At least in Iraq, a “democratic” and somewhat united faction could be elected (shunning the other, immediately creating civil unrest). What of Libya? The NTC has not been able to agree on anything, much less hold their own in spite of NATO efforts to reduce Gadhafi forces to cinder and ashes. Who are the people that will govern Libya? What is the time frame for a military withdrawal from Libya in the event of a winning scenario? None of these things are very clear. Do Europeans really believe that all they need to to is wave about the wand of democracy for it to magically establish itself? There is little evidence to the contrary.

Faced with a resilient enemy that the European herd of narcissistic politicians has so gravely underestimated, faced with an uncertain outcome and with no apparent contingency planning, things look poorly indeed. Was there even a joint discussion as to the possible outcomes? Imagine a leaderless Libya with all manner of hostile factions, armed and aggressive. An Afghanistan on the borders of Europe. Imagine the weapons raided in the early weeks of the Libyan war circulating for years among dissidents, terrorists and anyone with the cash to purchase them. Weapons are, ironically, among the best pieces of engineering on earth – with incredible lifespans. Far longer than your average car, dishwasher or PC. Have a look at images from war zones in the Far East – the weapons are likely to have been in circulation for two, three or even more decades. Children kill men with arms inherited from their fathers. Will the fighting factions simply return the arms once the conflict cools down? Or will the same guns spread into Europe, bringing some of this famous “humanitarianism” back to them?

In conclusion, a humanitarian war is just like any other, even if the rhetoric is far more sinister. Not only do humanitarian wars tend to go out of hand, it is in their very nature to do so. Moral and ethics count for little on battlefields – and civilian lives for even less. There is no such thing as a humanitarian war. It is an oxymoron. The will to do good can never translate into taking up arms against anyone. To take up arms for territory, resource or even greed is far more honest. It is what it is: an inherent quality of purpose. A humanitarian, armed, effort is pure dishonesty in this respect – and nothing but a tool in the hands of self-serving politicians. The public needs to ask: “What lies beyond the intervention?” – and not nod in sickly complicity, filled with the conviction that the weapons their taxes buy are finally being put to some “good”.

As it turns out, in 2011 – we need to run from all of the things that want to “help us”, humanitarianism included.

And yet, witnessing it play out in the public is unsettling. The unreal has so poisoned society that no one really seems to notice the consequences. We are all astronauts looking down on earth from space as we sit in the closed ecology of our empty rooms, our brittle topography, “communicating”, as it were – with other astronauts, each of them orbiting the same earth. Each of them, equally detached in their lone trajectory. Each of them behind the luminous LCD-screen of their laptop. Each of their fingers trapped in the crevices of their keyboards.

Though Virilio speaks of what speed has done to transform society far better than any amateur ever could (or, battle being lost, has any reason to), perhaps the real started to blur for us as human race when we first sat behind the dashboard of a car. The driver, plugged into his machine, shielded by steel and glass, accelerated his way through the veins of the motorway system, the landscape consequently dissolving into blurring images that bore no meaning except for their own disruptive esthetic. Something similar happens when we board, or fly, an airplane. And for want of that, something similar is happening behind a computer screen. Millions of intertwined networks, each lost in a personal ectasy of communication, tinker with the few remaining integral structures of culture. Each network cannibalizing its heritage at the highest possible velocity. With every single bit of communication, culture becomes more and more truncated, meaningless. Lost. Cut adrift from the surroundings that gave it meaning.

Everyone, and everything is speaking simultaneously. There is no one to interrupt the harmful and no one to shield the good. And why should there be? There is no point in doing so – nothing matters long enough in the New Unreal. The Global is a virus of total exchange, obliterating individuality and making locality purposeless. Humanity has become its own mad cow disease, a pandemic, a holy union of sacred unilateral pertaining everything.

A parable then: The human (race) is a perfect terrorist. As terrorism is an inescapable bi-product of global power, leaking from its structure, a faceless and nameless counter-power, the human has transformed into a festering, terrorist, virus on the corpse of Earth, attempting to destroy its true, global power. Yet we all know that ultimately, terrorism has no means of overthrowing the world order. The quest is an abberant one.

Baudrillard speaks of a non-Euclidean space where causality reverses and collapses. A catastrophic universe where rogue, disjointed, events happen spurned by the destruction of their carriers, their hosts.

Notice, for instance, how everyone, from the lowest commoner to the media “elite” is talking about these rogue events. The cataclysms, the acts of terrorism. “It was like something from a movie”, is a common phrase used by modern people. Two decades ago, without the speed of events, a comment like that would have been preposterous, laughable, naive even. Not so today.

Perhaps the phrase took hold immediately after September 11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers. The disbelief of the real was to some a part of their immune system. If you can’t believe it, then it does not have to be true. Even if it is. Truth and reality have become subjective and non-real. Non-Euclidean. The phrase “it was like something from a movie” is a semantic talisman, dampening the effects of the real, protecting the frail, corroded, weak human mind from the inevitable attack of the Real.

If that is a correct assumption, the terrorists of September 11 took away far more than the West’s sense of security. They took away the West’s sense of Reality. Because after all – how could the Twin Towers, the perfect reflective Twins – fall? Humans, lulled for years in the narcotic effects of the digital and habits of velocity simply chose not to believe the terrorist act passing into the Real before their eyes. The act that was more than real.

Since then, the phrase is used without afterthought, on any a small or large happening. There is no longer a Real. What remains is the astronaut, orbiting earth, forever secretly longing for an impossible re-entry. A re-entry that he knows will burn him on impact. So the Astronaut, the new non-Euclidean human, invents proxies by which to re-enter. Social media. A life lived digitally. A perpetual state of agitation. The normality of the unquiet mind. A wish for the Singular. A secret desire to melt into everything. A digital Buddhism in its own, binary, orgiastic delight. A birth and a death fused into a single event.

We can witness the effects online – more than anywhere. For the causal still exists, even though expelled from the realm of the Human. Stars move in spite of the New Human, and have always done so. The human, as an unfortunate cosmic accident is collapsing down into his final phase of object death, the universe unmoved by his passing. A too harsh a sentence? No. After the non-Euclidean there can be nothing. Truncate the snake into too small pieces and the snake will not re-assemble.

In these final days of the human mind as it has been up until now, Non-Euclideans share images, phrases, pieces of torn culture at a frantic pace. Hurling bits and pieces of information at one another in an endearing but ultimately futile attempt at rebellion. A passive protest. A barrage of imagery, stolen, regurgitated piecemeal at the mesmerized audience, perhaps as form of economical sabotage. Hurled at society in a final collective afterthought: “Perhaps it was wrong to assume that all our values were economical in character”. Perhaps it was wrong to assign an exchange rate to all that mattered. Perhaps we had set the limits too high. Production quotas as unrealistic as our dreams of eternal resources. The ecology movement; a stoic yet aberrant notion at reversal. We have eaten from the cake, it is too late to speculate if it is palatable.

Capital has become one’s personal ability to transfer to the Unreal. The sharing of stolen matter and thought, imagery and texts is the way by which the Unreal proliferates. Social media behemoths, Google, Facebook, pave the way. A way to monetize triviality, a social game from which there is no distraction. From which there is no escape. One does not escape the terror of the Unreal. Humanity, confronted with the perfect and divine model of itself – cannot bear the symbolism. Humanity, confronted with the speed and perfection of the Machine, surrenders to it, helplessly flapping its arms at her own fallibility. The Machine. More human than human itself, in the words of Phillip K. Dick’s Dr. Eldon Tyrell.

What remains, is a collective state of picnolepsy – the mind interrupted by millions of flickering senseless images, an Unreal universe without afterthought or coherent value. Without understandable codes and unquestionable ethics. All that is left after culture has eaten its own bones – is starvation.

Welcome to the non-Euclidean space.

It is your final one, Human.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

Rudyard Kipling
(1895)

MY friend, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I find:
The riches left, not got with pain;
The fruitful ground; the quiet mind;

The equal friend; no grudge; no strife;
No charge of rule, nor governance;
Without disease, the healthy life;
The household of continuance;

The mean diet, no dainty fare;
Wisdom joined with simpleness;
The night discharged of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress:

The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night;
Content thyself with thine estate,
Neither wish death, nor fear his might.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Poet. Warrior.
ca. 1517-1547

“History that repeats itself turns into farce. But a farce that repeats itself ends up making history”.

- Jean Baudrillard

Following the massacre in Norway on the 22nd July 2011, a deluge of information has hit the general public. Nothing, it seems, has been left without careful scrutiny.  As opposing factions don war paints in an effort to turn the event in their favor, a fact as tasteless as indicative of the morally bankrupt state of Europe, reports of every conceivable fact reach an expecting audience. An audience that in spite of being historically over priviledged on the account of information is insatiable in its greed for it. Insatiable, and for the most part incapable of performing a mature and personal analysis of the situation. In the information deluge, every piece of fact has an equal worth and the most ludicrous details are portrayed as matters of grave importance.

There is a near absolute vacuum of apolitical, level headed analysis. The capital sin of turning this modern day Herostratus (name omitted on purpose) misdeed into personal virtue is a sickening event to watch, with surprisingly thoughtless statements from combatants on either side of the political fence.

However, a few sources remain that with consummate consistency appear to be able to de-politicize news in the attempt to sift facts from opinions. The Global Intelligence agency, STRATFOR, is such a source. Almost exclusively a paid service (though there are a few articles each week open to the public), they provide the kind of guidance modern man needs, yet for the most part, shuns. When looking for sources and facts, news and their sources – journalists, due to their political nature as well as being victims of external manipulation are next to useless. There are no better news than intelligence and an alert, objective, mind.

Incidentally – there’s a mind trick that’s useful to remember when distinguishing news from opinions. Whenever a text is written in a (overt or covert) manner suggesting of what the author thinks should happen, be careful, you are being manipulated. And if so, you’re quite likely reading the news. The reverse speaks for itself.

In two recent STRATFOR articles (no link, texts available only for paying members), analysts discuss the Norwegian event from a causal angle. The gist of it is found to be that with the mainstreaming of far-right political parties, extreme elements such as modern day Herostratus are jettisoned in favor of public, and electorate, appeal. That in turn leads to extremists that otherwise would have been provided with a dampening framework are left out in the cold – and more importantly, left to their own devices to act.

STRATFOR:

As part of their makeover, many of Europe’s most powerful far-right parties have had to clean up their rhetoric and act as members of the mainstream. They have also had to jettison their most extremist elements. This process has left many, including Breivik, the suspect in the Oslo attack, on the outside looking in. However extreme their notions, these parties had a moderating influence on their most extreme members, who are no longer allowed to participate in clubs, associations and parties because they would compromise far-right parties’ efforts to gain political legitimacy. In this process, these individuals have been left without a group in which to belong.

Far-right parties are under a democratic system no different from their widely accepted counterparts (in spite of curious efforts to question the fact). They tend to move to the middle in order to attract public opinion and warrant their own survival. Simply, each thing that is born struggles to survive. Far-right parties, lemmings, human babies or even common bread mold, is not significantly different in this respect. Thus, in order to survive one has to adopt viable strategies. The situation is, on its zero level, seldom more complicated than so. The complications arise with political interpretation, personal agenda, beliefs, socio-economical atmosphere – and presumably of a other thousand contingencies for which this article is too brief to consider.

Extremist groups that moderate their behavior and agenda is nothing new. The ostracizing of unwanted factions in groups who strive for public appeal has previously yielded results akin to the recent event in Norway.

STRATFOR:

This process is not unique. It occurred in Europe in the late 1960s when a slew of Marxists and Communists decided to eschew international revolution, mainly due to the combined effects of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the 1968 Prague Spring. The Soviet Union was revealed for what it truly was: a self-interested geopolitical hegemon looking to preserve its sphere of influence, not an altruistic socialist experiment. En masse, former committed Communists became center-left Social Democrats, moderating their demands and becoming committed liberals and socialists. Many of these former student revolutionary leaders are now prominent European statesmen, very much members of the political mainstream.

However, not everyone followed this transformation. The fringe element, ostracized by their less extreme left-wing counterparts, formed their own groups. Many of them are remembered for how violent and militant they became, including the Red Army Faction, Direct Action, November 17 and the Red Brigades.

Reading up on some of the actions of the fringe groupings mentioned in the above quote, is truly disheartening. And so it turns out that objective logic works in much the same way for the extreme left as it does for the extreme right. The farce has turned into history. And it did so during an age where information is said to set the citizen “free”. During an age where the northern hemisphere need but flick a switch to be with spectacular ease able to read about similar, historical events. If we’re guilty of anything, it’s certainly not of creating a certain political climate. We’re not even guilty of any of the “phobias” that the press is so keen to assign blame to.

We’re simply – all of us – astoundingly, irreversibly culpable of being a herd of shockingly stupid creatures who have refused, and always will refuse to learn from history. As Baudrillard suggests we repeat our farce, turn it back to history – then with no further ado proceed to do it over, and over, and over and over again.

Presumably, in the words of Macbeth, until the last syllable of recorded time.

Now that Modernity is dead – the process of thinking and creating is contaminated with the process of technological automatizations, turning creators into machine-operators, mere automatons set on channeling the appropriate amount of voltage, trend sensitivity and maximizing the degree of incoming links in order to better masturbate the ego – suddenly, everyone is calling themselves curators.

In the Old World, a curator was, according to the collectivist automatons at Wikipedia:

“… a keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or archive) is a content specialist responsible for an institution’s collections. The object of a traditional curator’s concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort, whether it be inter alia artwork, collectibles, historic items or scientific collections. More recently, new kinds of curators are emerging: curators of digital data objects, and biocurators.”

Curators. Critics. Or both. In the post-post-Modern, everyone is a critic. Countless are the sites that have rebranded their effort from “blogger” to “curator”. A marketing ploy in keeping with the destruction of High Art concepts. The street is the Institution and the Institution no longer a boundary with requisites. A morally and ethically corrupt venue, slave to cultural cowardice, a deranged Dr. Frankenstein bringing to life the hastily re-stitched monster of multiculturalism on a seething bed of false narrative.

The digital world is suffering from attention deficit disorder. A state where posting pictures and random texts, snippets of music and other binary bric-a-brac at a hysterical rate, creating an over-consumption of narrative and in doing so all but destroying form and meaning. The digital is a flawed museum, amplifying the structural failure of Museums – a catalogue of ideologies in a world that no longer heeds ideology.

Digital curators are the henchmen of content psychosis, a delirious state where narrative and concept are separated from meaning and orthographic structure. “Nothing is as vast as empty things”, Francis Bacon wrote – but perhaps JG Ballard stated it better in his short story, “Studio 5, The Stars”, a beautiful metaphor musing on the death of the Muse and subsequent fall of the Artist – and how it may be awakened once more:

“I suppose its principally a matter of inspiration. I used to write a fair amount myself years ago, but the impulse faded as soon as I could afford a VT set. In the old days a poet had to sacrifice himself in order to master his medium. Now that technical mastery is simply a question of pushing a button, selecting metre, rhyme, assonance on a dial, there’s no need for sacrifice, no ideal to invent to make the sacrifice worthwhile -”

Dial a button, select some one else’s picture, post it on a blog and eagerly await acclaim. The creation replaced with selection. A gladiators arena of taste, not skill.

In Ballard’s story, Aurora Day, the Muse, by deception, threat and outright violence restores the order of inspiration and effort.

We eagerly await Aurora and the crusade against coin-operated-art. The possibility of her intervening remains the hope of Artists. In the mean time, there is much headway to be made simply be realizing that technology is not going to lead to what it once promised: The Dream of Superior Automated Content.

“When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return – it is not against the swine that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little that he was willing to fling them into the muck and let them become the occasion for a whole concert of grunting….”

These are the words of Dominique Francon. Dominique is a fictional character from Ayn Rand’s epic novel, “The Fountainhead”. They come to mind when wandering around in Sven Harry Karlsson’s newly erected yet curiously un-finished art museum situated in Vasaparken, a cosy part central Stockholm. One is amazed at how the chap truly must despise art, in spite his every media driven effort to prove the contrary.

Sven Harry Karlsson is a self made man. A mason by trade, he has managed to scrape together a sizeable fortune over the years, quite likely funds earned through his private construction company, Folkhem. A small venture operating in the Stockholm area – in the business of producing family-sized wooden houses, almost totally devoid of  creative feel and innovation. Nothing new there, Swedish architecture has never truly recovered its creative nerve or status since the 70′s – and for that Mr. Karlsson certainly is not to blame. At least not in as much as you can blame a passenger on the train from Inhabitable to Mediocre. In any case, Mr. Karlsson has decided to build his very own art museum.

Or is it? Because on entering, the visitor is told that over half the space in this new building is in fact set aside for domestic applications. Flats, studios and the like.

An unsuspecting party might not react to such a statement – but perhaps experience a trifle fear for art housed in residential areas. A fear that might escalate upon hearing that the architect of the site is one Gert Wingårdh. And that the top floor of the building is a private penthouse the plans of which precisely follow Mr. Karlsson’s 16th century mansion, Ekholmsnäs – with the motivation that he has never “seen the plan of that house improved upon”.

On reflection, that should be frightful news for anyone considering to buy a house built by Mr. Karlsson. Mental note to prospective buyers, then: The man disapproves of site plans newer than the 16th century. One does wonder where the bathroom facilities might be located…

For those unfamiliar with the name, Gert Wingårdh is one of precious few living Swedish architects with a decent enough brand value for investors to use his fame in order to be able to add another story or level to whatever building they’re planning. Greatly overrated, Wingårdh’s the sort of fellow you’d pitch to the Council, knowing full well that the politically appointed imbeciles in it know next to nothing about architecture or city planning. But they do know Gert Wingårdh, and as far as competence goes, that’s enough.

The description of the actual building, the bastard child of Mr. Karlsson’s 16th century estate and some copper brutalist outbreak is perhaps best omitted. Much like the rest of Folkhem’s mediocre production, it has not much to boast.

However, the fact that the museum is much more a block of flats than a celebration of art, the prime location – and not forgetting that Wingårdh’s name is smeared right across it like so much jam on the chin of a five year old, should raise some serious questions about the true nature of the venture: A bet made on a late night of fat-cat poker perhaps? Something to do with boasting about being able to trick the City of Stockholm into building private luxury apartments on prime real estate?

Because about art, it is not.

Yet Sven Harry proclaims himself to be an art lover. A collector and patron of the arts. Should such a bold statement not be reflected on site? Why then, was there at the public reception just one single piece of art in place? (An installation piece by Lars Kleen). Well, perhaps that was a bit harsh. There was in fact one other major piece, but since the fire doors had swung shut (trapping Mr. Karlsson’s visitors inside it) – in effect, only one piece could be viewed. Not counting the eye sore invoking, badly lit sculptures next to the cloak room, of course.

And why was Mr. Karlsson, whose lofty statements of bringing art to the people could be heard in the papers for weeks prior, not there for the public inauguration? Admittedly, he there was for the press.

Perhaps there was no time – or perhaps, Mr. Karlsson should have waited to inaugurate the whole project. As things stood at the time, the building was not finished. The elevators boasted spongy railings, a makeshift building light as only illumination, various parts of the interior clearly not in place, the sign system was a deplorable homage to amateurish efforts in Microsoft Word and nothing, nothing in the whole building seemed to actually work.

As any decent collector (say Christian Boros, for instance) with a stroke of healthy egoism will tell you, what is needed in a vanity project (apart from impeccable taste in art – and yes, there are better and worse tastes in art) – is perfection. If one is opening an art museum in one’s own name, should one not then wish it to be perfect – or as perfect as can be? Who in their right mind will let visitors into a hazardous criss cross of wires, untrained personnel, drying paint and malfunctioning doors? What myopia must have ruled at Mr. Karlsson’s office the day he decided to open a half-finished venture? Or perhaps his tenants were so anxious to move in that the whole “art thing” was forgotten in the process? (Dorothy! Where’s that damned sculpture? The press is coming!) Whatever took place, it was a bad choice, and it reflects poorly on Mr. Karlssons junior efforts at art patronage.

Almost as badly as he manages to put it himself, in fact. Stating that he wished to take the “drama out of art”, meaning to make it accessible to “everyone”, he in one interview finished the sentence by saying that he has no regard for international art. For Mr. Karlsson, Swedish art will suffice.

Truly, a novel way of disguising the obvious. Namely that he has no idea on how to value and appraise art. International or domestic. Moreover, it’s hard to claim something as ridiculously art-hating as wanting art to be simple and understandable. Without chastising junior art admirerers, clearly, the more references stacked in the eye of the beholder, the more the art will speak to him, or her. And references take time and effort. Mr. Karlsson’s statement might be the most silly thing said about art in public for many years and it suggests either a rampant hatred of the subject or just genuine incompetence.

Let’s hope for the latter, for the man’s own sake.

As the visitor leaves the “museum”, another line from the same novel by Mrs. Ayn Rand that opened this article comes to mind:

“A house can have integrity, just like a person; and just as seldom.”

Quite.

At first glance, a statement of social entrepreneurship might sound grand and good, but when you scrutinize the concept you might come to the conclusion that “social” and “entrepreneur” is in fact nothing more than an oxymoron.

There is after all no entrepreneurship that at least on some level isn’t social.

Consider reversing the idea: What does “unsocial entrepreneurship” look like? There is no market without clients and no taxes when products or services aren’t produced. On the whole, this model has been working fairly well, granted the occasional depression. Mismatches between the factors are offset by means of adapting and leveraging fiscal policies. Standard Keynes stuff, as it were, and though many liberals disagree on it, that’s pretty much how the market (predominantly in the Western economies) operates.

So why add “social” to “entrepreneur” a critical individual might ask? Experience tells us whenever there are too many words to describe something, it is either about creating an image, outright lie, or something in between. A due course in an investigation might be asking the “social entrepreneur” as to what he (because it most often IS a he), or she, what the business is all about. At this point, things start to get rather unclear and one is likely to hear the most outrageously funny claims told with the most serious of faces (social entrepreneurs are probably excellent poker players – beware!).

Without mentioning any particularly odd examples, the conversation usually goes something along the lines of this: The individual, the “social entrepreneur”, feels (with emphasis on feeling, not thinking) that “something” is wrong with the world, and he or she would like to help. Usually, this help is restricted to creating some form of online presence, getting others to notice it (yes, that’s right, “social” media is of course involved), then… well, there usually won’t be a “then”, since the individual, or by such time often a group, will notice that market rules cannot, should not and will not apply to what it is they’re actually involved with – charity.

Charity, at its best, is a by-product of a market economy. Capital can and should be used to prevent social injustices, stimulate growth and be a tool for overcoming poverty and suffering.

Charity, however – is not a business. It is exactly what the word means: Charity. Business models do not apply to charities, and charitable organizations have their own tax laws, regulations and codes of conduct attached to them. It is, as it should be. Social entrepreneurship, by contrast – is a sort of bastard child who’s inherited the worst possible DNA from both parents. No matter how social entrepreneurs will struggle to call their audiences “clients”, the term client will always denote “choice”. It is as inevitable as dark clouds denote rain. A “client” for social entrepreneurs has no choice, he, she or it, is selected – often by way of committee – incidentally, a committee again being not very compatible with anything even vaguely entrepreneurial. And while we’re at it, we might as well mention the confusion and general disagreement on the term “entrepreneur” within the ranks of the socially entrepreneured. There are hard-liners who are claiming that the term is far too egocentric and focuses too much on the individual. What we are faced with is a quagmire of conflicts, subjectivity and unclear motives.

In effect, given the vague definition of social entrepreneurship, the lack of consensus within the field and the fact that the “business model” has some pretty serious theoretical flaws – not even mentioning what seedy Pandora’s box is likely to await the scholar who were to aim some serious research into the premises of social entrepreneurship – then what, in fact, are we looking at?

Given the charity-sector’s prevailing financial problems, it makes sense to re-brand from “charity” to “social entrepreneur”. Things are so much easier when contacting the bank, an conservative institution who’s likely to be very skeptical of too overtly leftist money-leaking schemes with little or no financial benefit, control or business plan. A ruse to camouflage terrible business from the eyes of bankers then? The explanation seems more than likely, given it’s recent popularity.

Not being able to define what it is you actually do can be made to work to your advantage, especially when your speaking partner isn’t paying attention (very useful in the case of seeking grants from “social” banks, the utterly derelict and morally corrupt European Union or any number of social divisions within State or Municipality). For instance, when confronted with facts, objects and figures, there’s the possibility of morphing the alleged “entrepreneurship” to a different place on the map, befuddling the question with a rhetorical pirouette consisting of a clever use of the word “social”, “responsibility” and “growth”. Ta-da, the money rattling machine says.

Money, usually generated by legitimate, often old-fashioned businesses. With business models, revenue strategies and actual people doing actual work. Money, made from engineering ingenuity, hard labor and clever market services. Money accumulated through charity – and taxes.

In this short text there is no place for a complete discourse on social responsibility of the corporate sector, and we will most fashionably forego to mention the other, perhaps tad more regulated branch: CSR (though be sure, also beset by critics, unsurprisingly often from the ranks of the “entrepreneurs” themselves). What is noteworthy, however, is that if there is any actual value to social entrepreneurs it is that in many cases it is a useful tool for hiding skyrocketing figures of youth unemployment – and some of the online efforts built by them are clever mass data collection units – even if they usually turn out to be complete conceptual failures.

Social entrepreneurs are obsessed with scale. This, they by and large share with actual businesses. It is not enough to “save” one client and operate one unit at a time. For social success (to whatever end stated) you need to be able to enlarge your operation. Even in a sustainable world, there needs to be some level of growth, even if it isn’t strictly marketable. Sadly, as most of the social ventures are based in online milieus, they are either one-off’s built on the image and work of individuals or simply impossible to migrate to the real, unrelenting, unforgiving world of actual problems, suffering and trauma.

Yet, the hype goes on and legions of social entrepreneurs, entrenched in modern offices – subsidized by tax payers or businesses that actually generate capital – continue to make small or no difference to real world problems, and are quite free to feel cosy about themselves contributing to some grand, esoteric goal.

Woe is he who would dare to question such lustrous visions. The highbrowism of contemporary social youth is almost as dangerous as it was of its punk counterpart, some two-three generations ago. Though, arguably – the Punks were less serious about the whole thing – and viewed themselves a lot less seriously. Today, it is not uncommon to encounter sect-like behavior, ostracizing of critical thought and other generally un-social behavior coming from the future saviors of the planet. Attitudes are however only just that – attitudes, and what prophets do not have their fallible days?

Or should the real business world tolerate such behavior? After all – it is this world and no other, that in the end finances these youthful antics. Perhaps we should expose social entrepreneurship for what it, at least for the moment, seems to be: Neo-communistic market-hating fetishism. Perhaps we need to see through all the imagery, the hype and outright lies; the cocky self-assertiveness of people who have achieved nothing, yet claim rights to the achievements of others. Perhaps we need to call social entrepreneurship by its rightful name: Theft.

Then, and only then, will we be able to put some serious, actual, hands-on, effort into correcting the injustices of this world. We cannot will the world into submission – regardless of how many “online startups” we finance. Only hard work, tears and blood will achieve that.

We need boots and hands on the ground: engineers, doctors, scientists and skilled individuals – not sect-minded-minded youth with their heads in clouds.