… in Europe and, as we can see, in the US too. Entirely false promises are being made, but this is a fantasy that comforts many. It is a fantasy of withdrawal from a globalised world, stopping the free movement of people and labour.  The real challenge for anyone vaguely liberal/left is to counter this, not with some old-school internationalist vision, but with something that is both local and modern, that accepts there is anxiety instead of telling people they are simply wrong and stupid to feel it, or that it is some kind of false consciousness.

Suzanne Moore  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/20/world-going-to-hell-in-handcart-but-no-time-to-disengage

The above quote and my title reflects the turmoil going through my mind.  Is it me or is the world breaking apart more than ever before?  I voted against Brexit, have made three anti-Trump TV videos for Dukascopy TV and to cap it all have just spent two months working flat out on a National Plan to save Somalia’s descent into terrorism and despair.

Maybe my mind is clouded because of the above as well as the ease of access to social media from seemingly everywhere.  Was the world always such a mess and we just know more about it now we have 24 hours news coverage that was only brokered just a few decades ago by CNN.

Now I wonder if I have wasted my time in promoting CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility – which means for any set of bodies or institution be they private, public or NGO that they treat their stakeholders responsibly.  I started that work just after the fall of the Berlin Wall when the hateful Soviet regime fell apart and the two Germany’s came together in a joyful shower of public delight and unity. The end of despots and a return to democracy, human rights, the rule of law and a free press.  Such Joy!

The new optimism led me to think that now the private sector has been given its head and to avoid the collapse of capitalism a la Marx, the new way must be a mixture of public and private economies with a strong dose of responsibility.

And since that heady time what have we seen?  Amazingly CSR has taken root and every large company, and many Governments, have adopted CSR.

Yet is the rise of CSR (or whatever we call it) enough?  Since that time we have seen the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the disastrous Iraq war mistakenly conducted because of 9/11, the collapse of the Middle East and the rise of the most vicious and nasty group of fanatics known as IS since the Nazis.  More recently we have read the stunning analysis of a few greedy American capitalists in Jean Mayer’s Dark Money leading to the rise of the amazing gibberish of Trump and the disastrous Brexit.

Take Brexit which I voted against. The EU has never been perfect but the mixture of isolationism, underlying racism and anti-immigrants that characterise, to my mind, Brexit does seem a cause too far.  It also seems to me that the vote against was composed of people worried about their jobs in the North outside London and the out and out racists in the South also outside London – i.e.mainly political against the equally dreadful Cameron and Corbyn.

Then come all the lies from that awful racist Farage as well as the even more awful Boris Johnson (GBP 350 million in costs to the UK from the EU per week – an out and out lie)..more awful since like the father Le Pen in France smart people using racism to win an argument, even though they can easily argue both sides, totally disgusts me.

So why do you intellectuals such as John Redwood continue to support Brexit seeing that it is likely to do more damage to the UK (if no Brexit Brexit) than two world wars as Scotland, Northern Ireland and possibly Wales leave the UK?  Let alone the uncertainty regarding the ‘confidence fairy’ in the UK economy.

So as CSR rose, the world falls apart.  Was I wrong to put my life for twenty years into CSR?  Is it worth continuing that work or should I now turn into an activist and try to influence even one person who has fallen into the trap of nihilism and anti-immigration?

Bio:

President of MHCi, an international research and advisory services company. Regular blogs, newsletters are produced and MHCi is the holding company for the CSR and Financial Institute, and also the holding company for the CSR International Club which now has 3000 members worldwide.