In the 'post-truth' world of fake news and filter bubbles, the virtual community is becoming increasingly unreliable. This commentary (like the previous one on 'skill') inevitably brings us back to the subject of technology. That Regionalism has grass root tendencies would seem obvious, but the point we would like to make here is that our communities – in an era of entertainment news, countless disparate information channels – are becoming increasingly fractured. It could be said this began when the culture Industry introduced a specific 'Youth Culture', in the early 1950s, intervening in the relationship between parents and community, and the young; thereby interrupting the transmission of knowledge, and disrupting the continuity of culture. This subject will be explored later, but here we must look at the present day, nearing the end point in this process, as it was described in various texts on social theory.

Today, we have only the appearance of a 'global village', perpetuated and reinforced through an international technology-based culture that sometimes gives the impression of a functioning global community – 'one world'. So long as we don't look too closely, or ask too many questions, the facade can be maintained. Our Facebook era, filtered news, works tirelessly however, to ensure that certain questions are not asked. Whole areas of discourse, including many areas of traditional knowledge, are entirely removed, and would be conspicuous by their absence if the public knew they existed, or understood their worth. As simply one other facet of the Culture Industry, the news is curated in much the same way as the content that fills the walls (and spaces) of the institutions of contemporary art. On every level, increasing globalization is presented as the only way forward – the only option – and anything that could contradict or threaten this model is simply excluded.

The political and economic integration required to make the Internationalist's 'one world' vision a reality, however, means the end of local self-determination (as discussed elsewhere). As power is continually stripped from accountable, democratically elected regional authorities (municipal, provincial and national), it is transferred to supra-national organizations and power elites who determine the policies our national governments adopt – sometimes without any pretence of consulting the people they represent. On a local level, the conversation focuses on insignificant details – trivialities and amusement – as most citizens have reduced their involvement to the intermittent, and ever more symbolic, act of voting. (See 'Advanced Capitalism')

The end of sovereign currencies heralds the end of our 'democratic', 'sovereign national governments', and the end of the era of the Nation State; as the Governor of the Bank of England makes clear in his recent book, The End Of Alchemy. This really will be the end of an era; as 'supranational ambitions' are realized, the idea of democracy will recede into the recent past – where, in this age of cultural amnesia, it will be promptly forgotten.

Since life already seems too complicated, the idea that decisions directly affecting our lives are made behind closed doors no longer seems to worry most people – unaware (or unwilling to accept) that the quality of life will diminish further as a result. This has been the trend for the past twenty or thirty years, of course, and the flow of wealth, away from a disengaged middle-class, into the hands of those who are designing this new political and economic system, is only going to accelerate. The public was not consulted (or informed in any way) when national sovereign currencies were replaced by debt-based private currencies. On the surface it appeared as if nothing had happened, but the result of this was that wealth generated by economic expansion could now be redirected, invisibly, into private hands; rather than to the national treasuries, to pay for pensions, health care, education, etc. Taxes that once paid for public services, were then required to service the debt that began to accrue, and as these debts increased, pressure to privatize more concrete public assets grew. Those at the receiving end of this reverse cash flow could now afford to acquire infrastructure – at knockdown prices – from indebted governments; and this process is ongoing.'

The secret privatization of Canada's money (which has made the privatization of all public assets inevitable in time) is a case of 'Taxation Without Representation'[1]; no one asked the taxpayers, who would bear the cost of this policy, if they wanted to give up the country's sovereign money and adopt a costly debt-based currency. Years later hardly anyone knows what happened; debt has become a way of life, and it is no longer questioned. This issue is rarely raised, and is essentially never spoken of by economists, politicians, accountants, the media – all of the people we would expect to inform us of such things. The Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) component of so-called 'free trade deals', whenever mentioned, goes in one ear (of the tax payers who will cover the cost of lawsuits against the Canadian government/people) and out the other. Thus far, international businesses have been making out like bandits. The same for the so-called 'bail-in' bills, that could see the confiscation of funds directly from saver's banks accounts the next time the banks get into trouble (Read Sir. Mervyn Kings assessment of the likelihood of another economic crisis requiring cash infusions for the banks[2], and explore the quiet transition from 'bailouts' to 'bail-ins' - additional material below). Meanwhile, as ever more ingenious ways of reducing the middle-class to poverty are quietly introduced, information networks fill with banal, 'entertainment news', and the public discourse, mirroring this, becomes similarly vacuous.

Most of the people we would expect to inform us of such things are oddly silent. Artists, who used to speak out on such issues in days gone by, remain silent today, in the belief that they can no longer effect change (see Robert Hughe's comments on this); or, worse, that is not the artist's role. The history of artists bringing about positive change in the world is no longer discussed by our cultural institutions, and thus, the idea that we should be talking about such issues seems mildly ridiculous. Whether those artists who remain silent are complicit, as Baudrillard seems to suggest in his Conspiracy Of Art, we can not know; it is more likely, I would suggest, that those who might feel inclined to speak out and advocate for change, simply don't believe anyone will listen to them. In the post modern age, this may well be true.

The London Regionalist artist Greg Curnoe told us that our politicians were selling us out; he stencilled his messages onto his paintings, in fact. Did anyone listen? Maybe, but certainly no one was able to change things, even as the biggest 'sell out' of the public by its elected representatives – the privatization of the Canadian dollar – took place in complete secrecy at that time. So maybe it is only the naive artists who would still suggest artists might make change, those who believe that this time (given a few decades hindsight) the public may be inspired to support their artists, and work together with them for change.

Like the Agora of ancient Greece, where people met face-to-face and discussed real issues – issues directly related to the well being of society – the old way is probably still the best way. When Neil Postman described his 'peek-a-boo' world of entertainment based, decontextualized news (in Amusing Ourselves to Death), he apparently never imagined customizable news, or popular news, where 'likes' and 'hits' (like Facebook, or Bing's 'popular now carousel') would determine the content. In our hyper-subjective, relativistic world, our own collective worldview shapes (and continually reinforces) the picture we have of the world – whether this view is correct or completely misguided, is irrelevant.

Postman did understand the distraction factor however, and the fact that this new media would immediately fill with mostly irrelevant content. He quoted Thoreau, who, commenting on the prospect of connecting Maine and Texas with 'magnetic telegraph', suggested that the 'first news that will leak through into the broad flapping ear of America will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.' This seems to be proven correct; Princess Adelaide being a celebrity of her day. Until the next random 'news' event is injected into the feed (fake or otherwise), titillating sound bites – the salacious, sensational and trivial – will provide a continuous distraction. This information is not presented to inform, of course, as Postman suggests; it is designed merely to amuse – as the word, quite literally means, to separate the individual from his or her muse and stifle creative independent thought. As stated in Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment:

'The stunting of the mass-media consumer’s powers of imagination and spontaneity does not have to be traced back to any psychological mechanisms; he must ascribe the loss of those attributes to the objective nature of the products themselves...'

'The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor of ideas and opinions'

Speaking of film and television, the most important channels for the delivery of mass- culture, Theodor Adorno writes, in The Culture industry:

'People give their approval to mass culture because they know or suspect that this is where they are taught the mores they will surely need as their passport in the monopolized life.'

'A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture ... Artists are now starting from a globalised state of culture'[5]

– Sir. Mervyn King

– Iain McGilchrist