Alnoor Ladha: Globalisation, Capitalism, Colonialism
“Colonialism has never ended. Slavery has never ended. Feudalism has never ended. The power elite just find more and more inventive ways to exploit the majority.”
In this episode of EcoResolution Interviews Ruby sits down with Alnoor Ladha, where together they discuss economic globalisation, localisation, and the role of decentralisation in breaking down social inequality and ecological collapse.
“What we want is a new type of system that is based on the values of solidarity, justice, empathy, generosity, interdependence, and non-violence…”
With global supply chains, free trade, and the prioritisation of private property over ecological and human life, economic globalisation and its capitalist framework is intricately linked to historic colonialism, slavery, and environmental destruction. How do we move beyond such global, all-encompassing systems?
“What’s so messy about modernity is that in some ways the power elite have our complicit willingness to [exploit the majority of us]. Because we want the latest clothes from H&M, we want the music they tell us that we should be listening to and the automobiles that they design. It’s actually the complex of desire, that is then perpetuated by the advertising industrial complex, and the values and the sort of shaming complex, that then put us into this system. Now, people are happy to work minimum wage in their bullshit jobs.”
“The complexity of colonialism has now been internalised in all of our minds. I think it was Steve Biko who said: The most useful tool of the coloniser is the mind of the colonised. In some sense, we are all that.”
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Alnoor’s work focuses on the intersection of political organizing, systems thinking, structural change and narrative work. He was the co-founder and Executive Director of The Rules, a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers and others focused on changing the rules that create inequality, poverty and climate change. TR started in 2012 as a time-bound project and an experiment in temporary organizational design, exploring new ways of how to work, play, and make trouble together.
Alnoor comes from a Sufi lineage and writes about the crossroads of politics and spirituality in troubled times. His work has been published in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Truthout, Fast Company, Kosmos Journal, New Internationalist, and the Huffington Post among others. He is a board member of Culture Hack Labs, a co-operatively run advisory for social movements and progressive organizations. He holds an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics. Twitter: Alnoor.ladha
