Ross Alexander Cameron (Australia) speech at the Global Conference on Multipolarity
Ross Alexander Cameron (Australia) – political scientist and commentator. A research fellow at the University of Canberra's National Security
Thanks very much.
I just want to say Wen Qing, I think you're doing a terrific job on behalf of the Asia Pacific delegation. And, you know, not always perfect circumstances. But look, I am a pretty ordinary Australian citizen. But I have I still have a functioning brain. And when I was first invited to join the multipolar conference, so I went and did a bit of research. And that took me to the Guardian newspaper, John Ross, in Moscow, March 16, who described this collection of speakers as a group of fringe dwelling conspiracy theorists and Russian propagandists. So, I thought, well, I definitely want to attend that conference. Because that's me.
Yeah, that's my trouble. Because I just think if you have not been smeared and insulted by The Guardian newspaper, you're obviously not trying hard enough.
I am a Western god, okay, I'm your classic Westerner, in the sense that, you know, I believe in Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Abraham, Moses, Jesus of Nazareth. I like the philosopher Boethius who was executed in prison for his convictions. I venerate Rene Decart and, you know, somebody like Francis Bacon on the evolution of the scientific method, I like John Stuart Mill, on liberty. I go to Adam Smith and David Ricardo on the Wealth of Nations and the value of free trade, but I just have to admit that my own tribe has abandoned their foundation principles.
And what we described as the West today does not reflect those great historical antecedes. And so, like Socrates, I have a concern for definition. When we use the word multipolar, you know, I got into its origins, which we find really in biochemistry. And then we find that the original simple primitive forms of life, the amoeba, the algae, you know, the worms and the flies, they built around unipolar neurons. And they only have one axon and dendrites, they don't communicate backwards and forwards there, they don't really have to heavily engage with all of the other cells around them. But if you want to go to complex law, if you want to go to a vertebrate, we find that the biochemistry does this amazing shift, either by, by God or evolution, whichever you prefer, to the multipolar neuron, and that multipolar neuron, has the ability to communicate with all the other neurons.
And its axon is sort of sending information out and its dendrites, bringing information back and this cell has the capacity for an enormous amount of information processing. And indeed, we find that you and I, Wen Qing, as vertebrates, we have not a single unipolar neuron in our whole bodies, as 70% of the central nervous system of a human being is made up of multi polar neurons. And we have no unipolar neurons. And so I take this as a sort of a suggestion from nature that if you want to live harmoniously in more complex systems, you must have multipolarity and this was a kind of insight that took place in Europe in the early 1600s, after 30 years of the most brutal war, when about 450 likes came together to figure out how they could untangle the fishing line that was drawing them into constant brutal conflict and war with each other and they came up with the Treaty of Westphalia and the first expressions of the idea of national sovereignty, you know. I will respect your autonomy and you will respect mine.
And the historians of violence say that in the course of five centuries that have followed the world has become a less and less violent place. Yet we find it as the Western world loses touch with its ancient wisdom, that the world is becoming more violent and more threatening. And we see this instinct to try and superimpose a unipolar view, on what by nature is multipolar. And so the only way that can be achieved is with the use of books. And if I choose just three simple examples, you know, we find that in the area of economics, if you want a unipolar world, you must introduce sanctions on a multiplicity of nations to hold their head under water.
So, they cannot emerge as a competitor or rival to the unipolar hegemony. But the problem with sanctions is they injure the sanctioning country as much as they do the victim of the sanction. So, you take a little bit of fertilizer out of the market, and the price of fertilizer in the United States, in many places increase 200 to 300%. So, it's a very stupid policy, but it is the logic of unipolarity, isn't it? Yeah, so I just say what, whether you look at the media, which then runs on the basis of canceling alternative views, and censoring alternative opinions, and locking up one guy in Sydney, expresses the Russian view, he is now confined in the Russian Consulate, because he will be arrested if he walks out. And then, of course, finally, to the actual use of force, you know, permanent campaign of warfare, going from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya. And now, you know, to the Ukraine, which is all species of the same organisms of the permanent war, which is required by unipolarity to superimpose itself on the naturally multipolar human race. So, I just say it's my honor, to be joined by a group of others I regard whose main characteristic is sanity. And I just hope that the message of live and let live, can break through before we destroy the whole civilization.
