Social Change
How do we get out of this mess?
24/10/08 14:17 Filed in: Economic Crisis
I find all the numbers about the economy that are being banded around now to be mind-boggling. There are two big numbers that stick in my mind and that is the size of the bank bailouts in the UK and the USA. In the UK, the cost of the bailout plan is estimated to be around $1 trillion and in the USA, $700 billion.
The USA is the largest economy in the world with an annual Gross Domestic Product of $13.8 trillion, that represents about 25% of the world’s total economic output. The UK is the fifth largest economy with a GDP of $2.8 trillion. Ranking at positions of 2, 3, and 4 are Japan, Germany and China. China’s economic importance is growing fast but the size of its economic output is a little over 25% of that of the USA.
These are a lot of numbers I know. I wanted to write them down so I got some perspective on what it is we are talking about.
The size of the UK bank-bail out if it was looked at on the scale of national economies would rank at 13th in the international GDP table. The amount of money that the UK is making available to its banks is greater than the GDP of some 166 other countries.
With the cost of the bailout, the size of the national debt of USA and UK has soared during 2008. Under the Bush administration, the size of the national debt as a proportion of GDP has risen from 60% to around 115%. In the UK, the national debt may reach 100% of GDP or more this year.
Another alarming statistic (Source: BBC Business news 24 October 24, 2008) is that the UK aggregate of national debt, corporate and personal borrowing is three times that of the country’s annual economic output.
So what’s happening now? We’ve had runs on banks and international markets. Now there’s a new game on the streets. We’re having runs on national economies. Banks, hedge funds and mutual funds are demanding repayment from economies that they perceive to be at risk, either because of their reliance on foreign borrowings or because they are net importers of goods and services or both.
The UK pound has fallen 20% against the dollar in the past three months. South Korea’s currency, the won, has fallen by 29%. There are some obvious candidates like Hungary, Ukraine and Iceland lining up in the financial emergency room too.
The South Korean problem is complex and again, whilst the issues are in the banking systems, they have nothing to do with mortgages, housing or sub-prime loans but wholesale capital withdrawals resulting from imprudent deals struck by banks in currency hedges (Currency hedges are intended to offset risk through the simultaneous sale and purchase of forward currency contracts).
South Korea is a strong exporter. Its trading performance and its balance of trade is healthier than UK’s and probably the USA’s too albeit on a smaller scale. It ranks thirteenth in the world in terms of economic output.
Other countries suffering substantial capital withdrawals are South Africa and Argentina.
It’s expected that the UK will announce economic contraction today or “negative economic growth” as the city boys like to call it. It will get worse, possibly much worse as the UK has moved out of manufacturing industries to an economy where its mainstay is the fast contracting financial services sector. The financial services sector in the UK while it only accounts for 4% of total employment represents 30% of the UK’s GDP.
As Mr. Bush Sr. said, “It looks like we’re in deep doo doo now.”
It’s not only about the sub-prime issue anymore. When markets start dealing in national economies, it affects us all. Historically, national instability on a wide scale has tended to result in conflict and wars. Let’s hope we’ve learned some lessons from the past.
I’ve heard lots of arguments about reducing taxation and the bailout bringing benefits from the “trickle down” effect. Trick or treat more like! The treat is that the wealthy benefit, and the trick is that the poor suffer. Trickle down has been argued since Hoover in the twenties. It didn’t work then, it doesn’t work now. There is nothing to support the argument that it has ever worked.
In principle, I am strongly opposed to the bail out now. I have changed my mind about it. I am opposed to it since it is fundamentally undemocratic. To use, Chomsky’s words, “private corporations are tyrannies who account to no one other than themselves.” They are run for their own profit, not the benefit of the world or the public. In short, they are in it for themselves and no one else. If banks want to play Russian roulette with national economies, they’ll do it if they see profit for themselves.
I don’t believe either that the rot in the banking systems is solely to blame for our current economic difficulties. I have never believed that particular story. The turmoil in our financial systems is, I believe, a symptom of underlying economic instability rather than its cause. Banks may play a big part in that system and be central to its functioning but they do not exercise any overall control of the economy itself, but supply a service to it. The service is debt, more normally called credit. The realisation or appreciation of assets, or the prospect of future earnings offsets the credit risk. Credit is at risk, when economies contract, assets depreciate and earnings do not grow or diminish. When credit goes bad, banks make losses.
The so-called sub-prime crisis may not have happened unless the value of homes, of mortgage collateral, was called into question. The asset value of homes fell which meant that banks were unable to realise the security they had taken in return for the credit that they had extended.
My real concern is for the average person on the street. I don’t know a massive number of people, but I have talked to so many who are suffering or have suffered major economic hardship now. They have lost their jobs, their homes and in one case, I know someone who will be facing bankruptcy in the next couple of weeks. He was formerly a capable and successful businessman. I don’t need government to say, “We’re in recession. It’s official!” I know that to be the case as financial difficulties are multiplying around me all the time. I can see them with my own eyes. Everyone I know, every single person knows someone who is suffering real hardship now.
So what’s the answer? There are possibly two answers, but both amount to the same thing. It’s not that difficult. The answer is about democracy. In the dictionary definition, democracy "is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system." In the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
We need to decide whether democracy is what we want and be prepared to do something about it. We have to decide what we want in this world, if it’s public welfare or not. The wellbeing of banks does not and will not necessarily bring about public welfare or alleviate personal financial hardship. They will willingly take taxpayers’ money then spend it in achieving their own ends whether that’s mergers, acquisitions or anything else, so long as it feeds their own self-interest.
The free market ideology was upheld until big businesses started to flounder. Now everyone is talking about increased regulation and control of big business by government. I might ask, in order to achieve what end and for whose benefit?
The political process has become divorced from the people both in the UK and the USA. I do not know anyone who believes they have any real influence over the democratic process. Government is, therefore, no longer democratic or to use Chomsky’s words “there is a democratic deficit”. Whether it’s Republican or Democrat, New Labour or Conservative, nothing will change until we recover the essence of Lincoln’s dictum and we assume and take responsibility for public well-being.
Obama will not make a difference unless he works within some overall social organisation that restores democratically representative government. The real power structures within our society have little to do with government, but are capable of being transformed by government if it has the political will to do so. These power structures that are founded on economic self-interest will resist change by using every means at their disposal. It’s no small challenge.
I believe in democracy. I also believe in freedom, personal and social responsibility and self-determination. That’s about all.
I mentioned two options: First. we can pull out of free market economics to an extent and endeavour to restore economic equilibrium through increased government control and regulation. I am not sure it will work. Democratic government represents the will of the people. Business corporations represent their own interests. They are neither the same nor are they necessarily compatible. Our economic systems are failing. It may be that government intervention keeps the market, which is fundamentally unstable and inherently inefficient, on “life support”, but I wonder if the patient will ever recover. This is the first option. It’s about big government and government control. Nevertheless, it requires a fundamental re-alignment of the conduct of government with overall public interest and wider democratic participation.
I’ve had a number of personal crises in my life. They have all been about change and the need to change. I’ve never had a benevolent philanthropist throw money at me so I could carry on living as before. I have had to change. There is a lot of nonsense talked about the Chinese etymology of the word crisis saying that it signifies two words, “danger” and “opportunity”. This is incorrect. In fact the Chinese word crisis is derived from the something closer in meaning to “an incipient moment”, a moment in which something is in the process of becoming. I believe that a crisis is closely connected, not with catastrophe but, with the process of change itself.
My second option is also my preferred one and it involves turning the bailout on its head. It goes like this: We leave the markets and businesses alone to find their own solutions. They may or may not. It matters little. Government provides a safety net to the people and directs its resources entirely for the benefit of the people affected by any systemic economic failure. $700 billion should do it easily, and it would not be a bottomless pit either. In practical terms, this means that it would need to guarantee not the wellbeing of banks, but the safety of people’s money in those banks. It means that it would not legislate massive state initiatives to create jobs like the “new deal”, but support economic initiatives by the people themselves for the benefit and wellbeing of themselves and their own communities. It might even go further and promote work in environmental, health, education and ‘care for the elderly’ initiatives.
The key difference would be one of focus and of catering for people directing their efforts and resources for their own wellbeing, rather than for the benefit of the small minority who control large corporations. Large corporations may or may not survive in such a world. Their survival would be influenced by different factors, not by how much profit they made, but by how well they served a social need or purpose. I would vote for such a world.
It may be that the right solution is a hybrid of these two options. I would not rule out the direct intervention by government in a bank's administration or in facilitating a take-over in order to act in the public interest. My problem is in government using taxpayer's money to buy banks out of a problem that achieves little by way of improving corporate responsibility, and offers no obvious social benefit.
Sadly, I doubt if the answer will come with Barrack Obama, but he does offer the best chance of change. I hope he's not just different icing on the same old cake. There isn’t a hope in hell of getting out of this mess with McCain and Palin.
In conclusion, here’s today’s economic update from Europe. Shares in Europe’s main markets are down between 7% and 8% this morning.
The Bank of England deputy governor, Charles Bean said, "This is a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history."
The price of gold, typically, the place people put money in times of crisis has fallen by five per cent.
The USA is the largest economy in the world with an annual Gross Domestic Product of $13.8 trillion, that represents about 25% of the world’s total economic output. The UK is the fifth largest economy with a GDP of $2.8 trillion. Ranking at positions of 2, 3, and 4 are Japan, Germany and China. China’s economic importance is growing fast but the size of its economic output is a little over 25% of that of the USA.
These are a lot of numbers I know. I wanted to write them down so I got some perspective on what it is we are talking about.
The size of the UK bank-bail out if it was looked at on the scale of national economies would rank at 13th in the international GDP table. The amount of money that the UK is making available to its banks is greater than the GDP of some 166 other countries.
With the cost of the bailout, the size of the national debt of USA and UK has soared during 2008. Under the Bush administration, the size of the national debt as a proportion of GDP has risen from 60% to around 115%. In the UK, the national debt may reach 100% of GDP or more this year.
Another alarming statistic (Source: BBC Business news 24 October 24, 2008) is that the UK aggregate of national debt, corporate and personal borrowing is three times that of the country’s annual economic output.
So what’s happening now? We’ve had runs on banks and international markets. Now there’s a new game on the streets. We’re having runs on national economies. Banks, hedge funds and mutual funds are demanding repayment from economies that they perceive to be at risk, either because of their reliance on foreign borrowings or because they are net importers of goods and services or both.
The UK pound has fallen 20% against the dollar in the past three months. South Korea’s currency, the won, has fallen by 29%. There are some obvious candidates like Hungary, Ukraine and Iceland lining up in the financial emergency room too.
The South Korean problem is complex and again, whilst the issues are in the banking systems, they have nothing to do with mortgages, housing or sub-prime loans but wholesale capital withdrawals resulting from imprudent deals struck by banks in currency hedges (Currency hedges are intended to offset risk through the simultaneous sale and purchase of forward currency contracts).
South Korea is a strong exporter. Its trading performance and its balance of trade is healthier than UK’s and probably the USA’s too albeit on a smaller scale. It ranks thirteenth in the world in terms of economic output.
Other countries suffering substantial capital withdrawals are South Africa and Argentina.
It’s expected that the UK will announce economic contraction today or “negative economic growth” as the city boys like to call it. It will get worse, possibly much worse as the UK has moved out of manufacturing industries to an economy where its mainstay is the fast contracting financial services sector. The financial services sector in the UK while it only accounts for 4% of total employment represents 30% of the UK’s GDP.
As Mr. Bush Sr. said, “It looks like we’re in deep doo doo now.”
It’s not only about the sub-prime issue anymore. When markets start dealing in national economies, it affects us all. Historically, national instability on a wide scale has tended to result in conflict and wars. Let’s hope we’ve learned some lessons from the past.
I’ve heard lots of arguments about reducing taxation and the bailout bringing benefits from the “trickle down” effect. Trick or treat more like! The treat is that the wealthy benefit, and the trick is that the poor suffer. Trickle down has been argued since Hoover in the twenties. It didn’t work then, it doesn’t work now. There is nothing to support the argument that it has ever worked.
In principle, I am strongly opposed to the bail out now. I have changed my mind about it. I am opposed to it since it is fundamentally undemocratic. To use, Chomsky’s words, “private corporations are tyrannies who account to no one other than themselves.” They are run for their own profit, not the benefit of the world or the public. In short, they are in it for themselves and no one else. If banks want to play Russian roulette with national economies, they’ll do it if they see profit for themselves.
I don’t believe either that the rot in the banking systems is solely to blame for our current economic difficulties. I have never believed that particular story. The turmoil in our financial systems is, I believe, a symptom of underlying economic instability rather than its cause. Banks may play a big part in that system and be central to its functioning but they do not exercise any overall control of the economy itself, but supply a service to it. The service is debt, more normally called credit. The realisation or appreciation of assets, or the prospect of future earnings offsets the credit risk. Credit is at risk, when economies contract, assets depreciate and earnings do not grow or diminish. When credit goes bad, banks make losses.
The so-called sub-prime crisis may not have happened unless the value of homes, of mortgage collateral, was called into question. The asset value of homes fell which meant that banks were unable to realise the security they had taken in return for the credit that they had extended.
My real concern is for the average person on the street. I don’t know a massive number of people, but I have talked to so many who are suffering or have suffered major economic hardship now. They have lost their jobs, their homes and in one case, I know someone who will be facing bankruptcy in the next couple of weeks. He was formerly a capable and successful businessman. I don’t need government to say, “We’re in recession. It’s official!” I know that to be the case as financial difficulties are multiplying around me all the time. I can see them with my own eyes. Everyone I know, every single person knows someone who is suffering real hardship now.
So what’s the answer? There are possibly two answers, but both amount to the same thing. It’s not that difficult. The answer is about democracy. In the dictionary definition, democracy "is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system." In the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
We need to decide whether democracy is what we want and be prepared to do something about it. We have to decide what we want in this world, if it’s public welfare or not. The wellbeing of banks does not and will not necessarily bring about public welfare or alleviate personal financial hardship. They will willingly take taxpayers’ money then spend it in achieving their own ends whether that’s mergers, acquisitions or anything else, so long as it feeds their own self-interest.
The free market ideology was upheld until big businesses started to flounder. Now everyone is talking about increased regulation and control of big business by government. I might ask, in order to achieve what end and for whose benefit?
The political process has become divorced from the people both in the UK and the USA. I do not know anyone who believes they have any real influence over the democratic process. Government is, therefore, no longer democratic or to use Chomsky’s words “there is a democratic deficit”. Whether it’s Republican or Democrat, New Labour or Conservative, nothing will change until we recover the essence of Lincoln’s dictum and we assume and take responsibility for public well-being.
Obama will not make a difference unless he works within some overall social organisation that restores democratically representative government. The real power structures within our society have little to do with government, but are capable of being transformed by government if it has the political will to do so. These power structures that are founded on economic self-interest will resist change by using every means at their disposal. It’s no small challenge.
I believe in democracy. I also believe in freedom, personal and social responsibility and self-determination. That’s about all.
I mentioned two options: First. we can pull out of free market economics to an extent and endeavour to restore economic equilibrium through increased government control and regulation. I am not sure it will work. Democratic government represents the will of the people. Business corporations represent their own interests. They are neither the same nor are they necessarily compatible. Our economic systems are failing. It may be that government intervention keeps the market, which is fundamentally unstable and inherently inefficient, on “life support”, but I wonder if the patient will ever recover. This is the first option. It’s about big government and government control. Nevertheless, it requires a fundamental re-alignment of the conduct of government with overall public interest and wider democratic participation.
I’ve had a number of personal crises in my life. They have all been about change and the need to change. I’ve never had a benevolent philanthropist throw money at me so I could carry on living as before. I have had to change. There is a lot of nonsense talked about the Chinese etymology of the word crisis saying that it signifies two words, “danger” and “opportunity”. This is incorrect. In fact the Chinese word crisis is derived from the something closer in meaning to “an incipient moment”, a moment in which something is in the process of becoming. I believe that a crisis is closely connected, not with catastrophe but, with the process of change itself.
My second option is also my preferred one and it involves turning the bailout on its head. It goes like this: We leave the markets and businesses alone to find their own solutions. They may or may not. It matters little. Government provides a safety net to the people and directs its resources entirely for the benefit of the people affected by any systemic economic failure. $700 billion should do it easily, and it would not be a bottomless pit either. In practical terms, this means that it would need to guarantee not the wellbeing of banks, but the safety of people’s money in those banks. It means that it would not legislate massive state initiatives to create jobs like the “new deal”, but support economic initiatives by the people themselves for the benefit and wellbeing of themselves and their own communities. It might even go further and promote work in environmental, health, education and ‘care for the elderly’ initiatives.
The key difference would be one of focus and of catering for people directing their efforts and resources for their own wellbeing, rather than for the benefit of the small minority who control large corporations. Large corporations may or may not survive in such a world. Their survival would be influenced by different factors, not by how much profit they made, but by how well they served a social need or purpose. I would vote for such a world.
It may be that the right solution is a hybrid of these two options. I would not rule out the direct intervention by government in a bank's administration or in facilitating a take-over in order to act in the public interest. My problem is in government using taxpayer's money to buy banks out of a problem that achieves little by way of improving corporate responsibility, and offers no obvious social benefit.
Sadly, I doubt if the answer will come with Barrack Obama, but he does offer the best chance of change. I hope he's not just different icing on the same old cake. There isn’t a hope in hell of getting out of this mess with McCain and Palin.
In conclusion, here’s today’s economic update from Europe. Shares in Europe’s main markets are down between 7% and 8% this morning.
The Bank of England deputy governor, Charles Bean said, "This is a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history."
The price of gold, typically, the place people put money in times of crisis has fallen by five per cent.
|
O Brave New World!
09/09/08 13:34 Filed in: Social Change | Future
Where to from here? My answer is that I’m as unsure as the rest of us.
I do believe in freedom, autonomy and voluntary association as human values in which to aspire.
It surprises me how many people I talk to about freedom who appear terrified of it. I know many people are frightened of freedom, perhaps in the same way that they are frightened of responsibility. I’m not altogether sure where that fear comes from. In psychological terms, it may be from anxiety about maturation, from the desire not to leave the succour and the emotional sustenance of the providing parent. I’m not sure that is right entirely. We live in a world where we do as we’re told, and where we often conform to an infantilised state of mind. Psychologically, I wonder too what this fear of responsibility is about. Is conformity and responsibility an antithesis? It may be. Conformity is the easy way out too. It means copying someone else because another says it’s the right thing to do, rather than feeling or thinking for oneself. It is easier not to think.
There are two aspects of freedom, I believe, and they are “freedom from” that is a negative connotation and “freedom to be” which is its positive opposite. This is a little like the infant growing up. The “freedom from” is a freedom from oppressive and overbearing institutional way of life where we are told how to act, think or feel, rather than do it for ourselves. The “freedom to” part is to experience ourselves as loving, creative, constructive, responsible, actualised, and sometimes fulfilled, human beings. Resisting freedom in social terms may be the same as resisting growing up in human development.
And what of autonomy, how does that differ from freedom? Autonomy is simple. It’s the exercise of responsibility for oneself. It means taking responsibility for one’s own actions and moral decisions.
Perhaps there is a little more than that in our economic world to consider: There is the difference between “having” and “being” and how we define ourselves as human beings. If we define ourselves in economic terms, by what we have, then we lose our identity, our autonomy, if we lose our possessions. We become nothing if we have nothing.
As the psychologist and philosopher, Erich Fromm wrote: Being is about nothing more than the productive use of our human powers. “(Being means)…to give expression to one’s faculties, talents, to the wealth of human gifts with which every human is endowed. It means to renew oneself, to grow, to flow out, to love, to transcend the prison of one’s isolated ego, to be interested…to give.”
Freedom does present problems to humankind that have been overlooked by many individualist liberal philosophers. The major problem with freedom is that it requires individuals to exercise a high degree of personal, social and moral responsibility, rather than have someone else tell them what to do and take decisions for them.
There’s a favourite quote of mine by Nobel Prize winning American economist, James Buchanan, that I have mentioned elsewhere. He is talking about the “parental” role of government and the state:
“With parentalism…we refer to the attitudes of persons who seek to have values imposed upon them by other persons, by the state, or by transcendental forces. This source of support for expanded collectivization has been relatively neglected by both socialist and liberal philosophers, perhaps because philosophers, in both camps, remain methodological individualists.
Almost subconsciously, those scientists-scholars-academics who have tried to look at the “big picture” have assumed that, other things being equal, persons want to be at liberty to make their own choices, to be free from coercion by others, including indirect coercion through means of persuasion. They have failed to emphasize sufficiently, and to examine the implications of, the fact that liberty carries with it responsibility. And it seems evident that many persons do not want to shoulder the final responsibility for their own actions. Many persons are, indeed, afraid to be free.”
Without either freedom or responsibility, one cannot have existence by voluntary association, since voluntary association requires that humans collaborate and cooperate freely and responsibly to achieve their common goals. An intelligent observer of my writing suggested that we might need leaders since we are not necessarily capable of acting consensually, collaboratively and cooperatively. She makes a very good point.
It’s true that our present social systems are based on an authoritarian hierarchy that purports to be democratic. It is far from being truly democratic since other than deciding on the election of the “haves” or the “have mores” there is no general participation in decision-making. I have no influence over issues around health, poverty, education, social welfare and defence, other than those prescribed by alternative candidates. It’s token democracy where strong government is synonymous with state authoritarianism. The combination of the authoritarian state and multi-national capitalism means that I am told how to act, behave, think, work and consume. It erodes my humanity, since I am no longer free, but a thing, a means to someone else’s end. I am homo consumens, the consumer man.
My friend also makes an important point too indirectly about knowledge and belief. We have only very limited knowledge and experience of freedom and the exercise of personal and social responsibility since all aspects of our society are organised around leadership hierarchies where leaders take responsibility for telling others how to act. We might believe that we need leaders, since we have no experience of being without them.
I have two experiences of leadership experiments, both where, at least notionally, I was the leader.
The first was a quirky accident of fate. I was invited to join the board of a large mental health project based in London. They had a problem. They had too much money and were at risk of losing some very large government grants unless they got rid of a lot of cash quickly. Rather unflatteringly, at least so I thought at the time, I was asked to go there since their treasurer (a CPA known to me from university) felt I would know how to spend money "creatively"!
I joined the board of trustees, and within about six months, I was asked to stand to be chairman of the board. It was a trustee's voting nomination that I accepted. I accepted and was appointed.
It was an executive chairman's post and part of my job was supporting its management and staff. Within the trust, there was a deeply democratic ethos. Any employee, could attend a board meeting, and exercise voting rights in common with a board member. The only rights I had as chairman were the exercise of a casting vote in a deadlock, or a veto vote that deferred a decision to the next board meeting (that could be exercised only once).
My commercial training, and by day I worked as a chief executive of a computer software company, might have told me that this was a recipe for disaster. On the board, we had legal, financial and medical advisers, experts whose views and advice might theoretically be overturned by a junior employee.
It never worked that way, since there was a deeply respectful management style. Management’s role was not perceived to be one necessarily of leadership, control or authority, but of support, and access to the resources (including human resources) that enabled staff to undertake their work.
In theory, the employees through access and contribution to the board decision process might have caused a manager to be discharged or appointed. It never worked that way, because the role of management was to support and facilitate, rather than control.
What was even more rewarding was that not only did this odd management style that was properly democratic work, but it was enormously successful! It was so successful, in fact, that the Trust was appointed by the UK National Health Service to be its principal adviser and consultant on projects of its type. On a personal note, it was also the most alive and enjoyable place I have worked in my entire life. One of the things that distinguished this special project was the enlightened and involved attitude of its entire staff who cared deeply for what happened in their organization and jointly took responsibility for its wellbeing and its purpose.
In the nineties, I also had the experience of attempting to turn over a technology business to employee ownership and broader management participation. It could not have been more different. Some managers and employees had such profound difficulties in taking on responsibility that they teetered on the edge of sanity. Destructive sub-cultures formed who tried to usurp, seize or break off parts of the business that they could steal for themselves. In the end, I put a stop to it and returned it to its previous paternalistic management style that was, at least, largely benevolent and benign.
Of course, there was a major difference between these environments. The staff of both organizations were well paid, that much they had in common. The mental health organization had growth in its sights, but it was not its main purpose. The mental health project functioned as a trust for the benefit of those in its care; the company was a capitalist enterprise run for the benefit of its shareholders.
Despite a massive investment in culture change programmes, the underlying culture of the company was difficult to change. All that extended ownership achieved was to make manifest the unhealthy, political, opportunistic and often dishonest dynamics that existed in the workplace at almost every level. The ethos was that people worked in order to make its shareholders rich. People were a means to an end. When it was proposed to change ownership, it was seen as an opportunity by some to do to others, what had been done to them.
I’ll continue to think about this dilemma. I am unsure as to whether freedom and capitalism are contradictory forces. In my past, I had thought that, in a way, capitalism might embody freedom, but now I’m undecided. I’ll go away and think about the human values that underpin our capitalist societies. By the way, I’m opposed to socialism in all its previous manifestations too. Capitalism may be the lesser of two evils, where socialism represents authoritarian, and often totalitarian, state control.
More soon…
I do believe in freedom, autonomy and voluntary association as human values in which to aspire.
It surprises me how many people I talk to about freedom who appear terrified of it. I know many people are frightened of freedom, perhaps in the same way that they are frightened of responsibility. I’m not altogether sure where that fear comes from. In psychological terms, it may be from anxiety about maturation, from the desire not to leave the succour and the emotional sustenance of the providing parent. I’m not sure that is right entirely. We live in a world where we do as we’re told, and where we often conform to an infantilised state of mind. Psychologically, I wonder too what this fear of responsibility is about. Is conformity and responsibility an antithesis? It may be. Conformity is the easy way out too. It means copying someone else because another says it’s the right thing to do, rather than feeling or thinking for oneself. It is easier not to think.
There are two aspects of freedom, I believe, and they are “freedom from” that is a negative connotation and “freedom to be” which is its positive opposite. This is a little like the infant growing up. The “freedom from” is a freedom from oppressive and overbearing institutional way of life where we are told how to act, think or feel, rather than do it for ourselves. The “freedom to” part is to experience ourselves as loving, creative, constructive, responsible, actualised, and sometimes fulfilled, human beings. Resisting freedom in social terms may be the same as resisting growing up in human development.
And what of autonomy, how does that differ from freedom? Autonomy is simple. It’s the exercise of responsibility for oneself. It means taking responsibility for one’s own actions and moral decisions.
Perhaps there is a little more than that in our economic world to consider: There is the difference between “having” and “being” and how we define ourselves as human beings. If we define ourselves in economic terms, by what we have, then we lose our identity, our autonomy, if we lose our possessions. We become nothing if we have nothing.
As the psychologist and philosopher, Erich Fromm wrote: Being is about nothing more than the productive use of our human powers. “(Being means)…to give expression to one’s faculties, talents, to the wealth of human gifts with which every human is endowed. It means to renew oneself, to grow, to flow out, to love, to transcend the prison of one’s isolated ego, to be interested…to give.”
Freedom does present problems to humankind that have been overlooked by many individualist liberal philosophers. The major problem with freedom is that it requires individuals to exercise a high degree of personal, social and moral responsibility, rather than have someone else tell them what to do and take decisions for them.
There’s a favourite quote of mine by Nobel Prize winning American economist, James Buchanan, that I have mentioned elsewhere. He is talking about the “parental” role of government and the state:
“With parentalism…we refer to the attitudes of persons who seek to have values imposed upon them by other persons, by the state, or by transcendental forces. This source of support for expanded collectivization has been relatively neglected by both socialist and liberal philosophers, perhaps because philosophers, in both camps, remain methodological individualists.
Almost subconsciously, those scientists-scholars-academics who have tried to look at the “big picture” have assumed that, other things being equal, persons want to be at liberty to make their own choices, to be free from coercion by others, including indirect coercion through means of persuasion. They have failed to emphasize sufficiently, and to examine the implications of, the fact that liberty carries with it responsibility. And it seems evident that many persons do not want to shoulder the final responsibility for their own actions. Many persons are, indeed, afraid to be free.”
Without either freedom or responsibility, one cannot have existence by voluntary association, since voluntary association requires that humans collaborate and cooperate freely and responsibly to achieve their common goals. An intelligent observer of my writing suggested that we might need leaders since we are not necessarily capable of acting consensually, collaboratively and cooperatively. She makes a very good point.
It’s true that our present social systems are based on an authoritarian hierarchy that purports to be democratic. It is far from being truly democratic since other than deciding on the election of the “haves” or the “have mores” there is no general participation in decision-making. I have no influence over issues around health, poverty, education, social welfare and defence, other than those prescribed by alternative candidates. It’s token democracy where strong government is synonymous with state authoritarianism. The combination of the authoritarian state and multi-national capitalism means that I am told how to act, behave, think, work and consume. It erodes my humanity, since I am no longer free, but a thing, a means to someone else’s end. I am homo consumens, the consumer man.
My friend also makes an important point too indirectly about knowledge and belief. We have only very limited knowledge and experience of freedom and the exercise of personal and social responsibility since all aspects of our society are organised around leadership hierarchies where leaders take responsibility for telling others how to act. We might believe that we need leaders, since we have no experience of being without them.
I have two experiences of leadership experiments, both where, at least notionally, I was the leader.
The first was a quirky accident of fate. I was invited to join the board of a large mental health project based in London. They had a problem. They had too much money and were at risk of losing some very large government grants unless they got rid of a lot of cash quickly. Rather unflatteringly, at least so I thought at the time, I was asked to go there since their treasurer (a CPA known to me from university) felt I would know how to spend money "creatively"!
I joined the board of trustees, and within about six months, I was asked to stand to be chairman of the board. It was a trustee's voting nomination that I accepted. I accepted and was appointed.
It was an executive chairman's post and part of my job was supporting its management and staff. Within the trust, there was a deeply democratic ethos. Any employee, could attend a board meeting, and exercise voting rights in common with a board member. The only rights I had as chairman were the exercise of a casting vote in a deadlock, or a veto vote that deferred a decision to the next board meeting (that could be exercised only once).
My commercial training, and by day I worked as a chief executive of a computer software company, might have told me that this was a recipe for disaster. On the board, we had legal, financial and medical advisers, experts whose views and advice might theoretically be overturned by a junior employee.
It never worked that way, since there was a deeply respectful management style. Management’s role was not perceived to be one necessarily of leadership, control or authority, but of support, and access to the resources (including human resources) that enabled staff to undertake their work.
In theory, the employees through access and contribution to the board decision process might have caused a manager to be discharged or appointed. It never worked that way, because the role of management was to support and facilitate, rather than control.
What was even more rewarding was that not only did this odd management style that was properly democratic work, but it was enormously successful! It was so successful, in fact, that the Trust was appointed by the UK National Health Service to be its principal adviser and consultant on projects of its type. On a personal note, it was also the most alive and enjoyable place I have worked in my entire life. One of the things that distinguished this special project was the enlightened and involved attitude of its entire staff who cared deeply for what happened in their organization and jointly took responsibility for its wellbeing and its purpose.
In the nineties, I also had the experience of attempting to turn over a technology business to employee ownership and broader management participation. It could not have been more different. Some managers and employees had such profound difficulties in taking on responsibility that they teetered on the edge of sanity. Destructive sub-cultures formed who tried to usurp, seize or break off parts of the business that they could steal for themselves. In the end, I put a stop to it and returned it to its previous paternalistic management style that was, at least, largely benevolent and benign.
Of course, there was a major difference between these environments. The staff of both organizations were well paid, that much they had in common. The mental health organization had growth in its sights, but it was not its main purpose. The mental health project functioned as a trust for the benefit of those in its care; the company was a capitalist enterprise run for the benefit of its shareholders.
Despite a massive investment in culture change programmes, the underlying culture of the company was difficult to change. All that extended ownership achieved was to make manifest the unhealthy, political, opportunistic and often dishonest dynamics that existed in the workplace at almost every level. The ethos was that people worked in order to make its shareholders rich. People were a means to an end. When it was proposed to change ownership, it was seen as an opportunity by some to do to others, what had been done to them.
I’ll continue to think about this dilemma. I am unsure as to whether freedom and capitalism are contradictory forces. In my past, I had thought that, in a way, capitalism might embody freedom, but now I’m undecided. I’ll go away and think about the human values that underpin our capitalist societies. By the way, I’m opposed to socialism in all its previous manifestations too. Capitalism may be the lesser of two evils, where socialism represents authoritarian, and often totalitarian, state control.
More soon…
About human goodness...
08/09/08 13:57 Filed in: Human Nature | Philosophy
When I started to write about human nature, a major theme was whether humans either had the capacity or desire to make positive changes in their social, political, economic and physical worlds. I got badly tripped up on that one and there followed an endless debate about whether human nature is either good or bad. I take responsibility for that since I should have foreseen the interpretation that might have been placed on some of my words!
The arguments are meaningless since human behaviour might be perceived as good, bad, or millions of shades in-between, but that was not the point.
It was about whether humans wished for good in their world, but more than that, whether they had a desire, either individually or collectively, for better lives and consequently a better world. I concede in advance that “better” may mean different things to different people and social groups. To want other than better, or to want worse, would be pathological, if not psychopathic, and I don’t believe that the majority of humankind are pathological or psychopaths either.
Even those who are psychopaths frequently will offer altruistic and positive rationales for their psychopathic behaviour. Hitler started his invasion of other countries and his genocide of the Jews, and persecution of other social groups, such as homosexuals (the rationale for which came from psychiatrists among others) saying that he was acting in the cause of social good.
I believe that people do have an underlying desire for a better life. To suggest that people might desire worse lives, more killing, more wars, environmental damage that may threaten their survival, and the chance that their families, friends or children might die as a result of such eventualities would be completely pathological.
For any who say that there might be no worse or better, that things may remain the same; nothing ever remains in the same state, it will be better or worse.
The mighty military machine, political groups, trans- and multi-national corporations, the greedy and coercive may tell us that they too are acting in our best interests. They might deploy the media as a mass force for our conditioning; for stupefying and stultifying our powers of perception, feeling and thought; dumbing us down and numbing our ability to recognise that a naked emperor does not, in fact, wear any clothes!
But we too have the power to discriminate, to differentiate between truth and lies, to know that our happiness may not lie in more and more consumption to keep the rich, powerful and rich…to know that killing people is as undesirable as being killed, that wars risk the lives of our children and young people, that caring for our environment is as fundamentally important as caring for ourselves.
So I will write on about positive social change, as I believe that most people want and desire it. I do recognise that we may be told by the mass media, politicians, power groups and business elites that it is neither in our best interests to want it, and that we are impotent in a world that is best left to them to manage and control. I believe otherwise. I doubt if any mass media will be inviting me to express my views. So I’ll keep writing here…
The arguments are meaningless since human behaviour might be perceived as good, bad, or millions of shades in-between, but that was not the point.
It was about whether humans wished for good in their world, but more than that, whether they had a desire, either individually or collectively, for better lives and consequently a better world. I concede in advance that “better” may mean different things to different people and social groups. To want other than better, or to want worse, would be pathological, if not psychopathic, and I don’t believe that the majority of humankind are pathological or psychopaths either.
Even those who are psychopaths frequently will offer altruistic and positive rationales for their psychopathic behaviour. Hitler started his invasion of other countries and his genocide of the Jews, and persecution of other social groups, such as homosexuals (the rationale for which came from psychiatrists among others) saying that he was acting in the cause of social good.
I believe that people do have an underlying desire for a better life. To suggest that people might desire worse lives, more killing, more wars, environmental damage that may threaten their survival, and the chance that their families, friends or children might die as a result of such eventualities would be completely pathological.
For any who say that there might be no worse or better, that things may remain the same; nothing ever remains in the same state, it will be better or worse.
The mighty military machine, political groups, trans- and multi-national corporations, the greedy and coercive may tell us that they too are acting in our best interests. They might deploy the media as a mass force for our conditioning; for stupefying and stultifying our powers of perception, feeling and thought; dumbing us down and numbing our ability to recognise that a naked emperor does not, in fact, wear any clothes!
But we too have the power to discriminate, to differentiate between truth and lies, to know that our happiness may not lie in more and more consumption to keep the rich, powerful and rich…to know that killing people is as undesirable as being killed, that wars risk the lives of our children and young people, that caring for our environment is as fundamentally important as caring for ourselves.
So I will write on about positive social change, as I believe that most people want and desire it. I do recognise that we may be told by the mass media, politicians, power groups and business elites that it is neither in our best interests to want it, and that we are impotent in a world that is best left to them to manage and control. I believe otherwise. I doubt if any mass media will be inviting me to express my views. So I’ll keep writing here…
On human nature - Part 2
04/09/08 17:48 Filed in: Human Nature | Philosophy
There’s been a healthy debate raging down in the comments section of my earlier posts that has been getting fiery and passionate. All sorts of things have been rearing their heads down there from behavioural genetics to biopsychology, philosophical dualism, moral dichotomies, nihilism, post-modernism and debates about the nature of the question itself.
We’ve been going all over the place!
One argument went that the manifestation, complexity and multiplicity of human differences suggests that there can be no basis for suggesting any universal, underlying trait of goodness within human nature.
The word “goodness” has been a very emotive term! The word did not have to be “goodness”. It could have been several words like a “desire for a better life”. I preferred those words, since it’s easier to describe what underlying traits might represent “a better life” (for us all) than it is to say what goodness is.
The problem I had with this idea was that if I accepted it, I would slide into some black hole of moral nihilism, and I don’t want to go there, nor does anyone else I have ever known.
What is even more frightening to me is that it’s exactly this nihilistic view of humankind that supports religions everywhere…that we are all "sinners" who need to be "saved" from ourselves.
I strongly identify with the view of life that Chomsky expounds: one where I might feel autonomy, freedom, and work with others in voluntary association and without oppression, which means without economic repression too.
How do you feel? Do you not want that? Would anyone who understood what it meant not want it too?
On the point of religions, I believe that humans at a certain stage of their development took parables of wisdom and turned them into religions. Why? Because they didn’t have TV and stories by word-of-mouth were the way they communicated wisdom. Why? Because they desired and craved the goodness or the better life these stories talked about. The stories are totally unbelievable, yet men and women wanted what they promised so badly they reified them as objects of worship. They still do.
Religions of one sort or another have covered our entire planet, even in the most primitive societies, where they have worshipped totems or the elements. I don’t want to get into religious debate here. But the underlying attraction of religion, I would argue, is humankind’s overwhelming desire for a better life. Thus, I believe that desire to be an innate trait of human nature common to many throughout the world, and not simply part of western culture.
More soon...
We’ve been going all over the place!
One argument went that the manifestation, complexity and multiplicity of human differences suggests that there can be no basis for suggesting any universal, underlying trait of goodness within human nature.
The word “goodness” has been a very emotive term! The word did not have to be “goodness”. It could have been several words like a “desire for a better life”. I preferred those words, since it’s easier to describe what underlying traits might represent “a better life” (for us all) than it is to say what goodness is.
The problem I had with this idea was that if I accepted it, I would slide into some black hole of moral nihilism, and I don’t want to go there, nor does anyone else I have ever known.
What is even more frightening to me is that it’s exactly this nihilistic view of humankind that supports religions everywhere…that we are all "sinners" who need to be "saved" from ourselves.
I strongly identify with the view of life that Chomsky expounds: one where I might feel autonomy, freedom, and work with others in voluntary association and without oppression, which means without economic repression too.
How do you feel? Do you not want that? Would anyone who understood what it meant not want it too?
On the point of religions, I believe that humans at a certain stage of their development took parables of wisdom and turned them into religions. Why? Because they didn’t have TV and stories by word-of-mouth were the way they communicated wisdom. Why? Because they desired and craved the goodness or the better life these stories talked about. The stories are totally unbelievable, yet men and women wanted what they promised so badly they reified them as objects of worship. They still do.
Religions of one sort or another have covered our entire planet, even in the most primitive societies, where they have worshipped totems or the elements. I don’t want to get into religious debate here. But the underlying attraction of religion, I would argue, is humankind’s overwhelming desire for a better life. Thus, I believe that desire to be an innate trait of human nature common to many throughout the world, and not simply part of western culture.
More soon...
On human nature...
03/09/08 21:02 Filed in: Philosophy | Human Nature
I'm going to give my words a rest now. What follows are some extracts from an interview with Noam Chomsky on human nature, many of whose views I respect.
I like it, since it engages the debate on my last post, and provides a bridge between my ideas and those of Melinda whose views I also respect.
In the meantime, I'm going to put my thinking cap on and try and work out where I go from here!
This interview is Copyright © 2006 Noam Chomsky
QUESTION: You have argued that any stance one takes on political, economic, social or even personal issues is ultimately based on some conception of human nature. Why is this?
CHOMSKY: Any stance we take is based on some conception of what is good for people. This conception will tacitly presuppose a certain belief as to the constitution of human nature -- human needs and human potential. You might as well bring them out as clearly as possible so that they can be discussed.
QUESTION: According to your view of human nature, all human beings possess certain biological functions endowing them with common mental capacities. How do you defend this position against postmodernist critics who argue that there is no such thing as human nature, and that all attempts to define it are guilty of reading other cultures in the light of Western perceptions and values?
CHOMSKY: Not even the most extreme postmodernist can seriously argue that there is no such thing as human nature. They may argue that the exact properties of human nature are difficult to substantiate -- this is certainly correct. However, it is impossible to coherently argue that an intrinsic, universal human nature does not exist. This amounts to the belief that the next human zygote conceived might just as well develop into a worm or a crab as a human being. Postmodernists might limit their assertion to denying any effect of human nature on our mental make-up -- our values, our knowledge, our wants, etc. This also makes no sense. The postmodernist will argue that a child growing up in New York will develop a certain way of thinking, and if that child had grown up amongst Amazon tribespeople she would have developed a completely different way of thinking. This is true. But we must then ask how a child could develop these different consciousnesses. In whatever environment it finds itself, the child will mentally construct a rich and complex culture on the basis of the extremely scattered and limited phenomena it is exposed to. That consideration tells us (in advance of any detailed knowledge) that there must be an extraordinary directive and organisational component to the mind that is internal. We can begin to see human nature in terms of certain capacities to develop certain mental traits. I think we can go further than this and begin to discover universal aspects of these mental traits which are determined by human nature. I think we can find this in the area of morality. For example, not long ago I talked to people in Amazon tribes and I took it for granted that they have the same conception of vice and virtue as I do. It is only through sharing these values that we were able to interact -- talking about real problems such as being forced out of the jungle by the state authorities. I believe I was correct to assume this: we had no problem communicating although we were as remote as is possible culturally.
QUESTION: Are you suggesting everyone agrees about the nature of vice and virtue?
CHOMSKY: In fact I think they probably have a very high measure of agreement. One strong bit of evidence for this is that everyone -- a Genghis Khan, Himmler, Bill Gates -- creates stories of themselves where they interpret their actions as working for the benefit of human beings. Even at the extreme levels of depravity, the Nazis did not boast that they wanted to kill Jews, but gave crazed justifications -- even that they were acting in 'self-defence'. It is very rare for people to justify their actions by saying 'I'm doing this to maximise my own benefit and I don't care what happens to anybody else'. That would be pathological.
QUESTION: Most people certainly try to offer moral justifications for what they do. But there is also enormous diversity in what they do, and defend as right to do.
CHOMSKY: And there is a lot of variation in people's size. Take a walk through a museum where they have the armour from medieval knights and just look at the size of them: you could barely put a child into that armour. We have the same genes today as people did then, but we are very different because there have been radical changes in diet. This is characteristic of every aspect of organic development. Hence we should not be in the least surprised to discover that it is also characteristic of our social nature, our moral positions and so on. We are biological creatures.
QUESTION: But I think you would agree that not all cultures are equally viable from the standpoint of promoting human fulfilment and wellbeing? Are you wanting to argue that your understanding of human nature can give us a kind of objective understanding of the conditions of human flourishing?
CHOMSKY: Now we're taking an essentialist position which the relativist would contradict. I'm not willing to go that far. We can develop a stronger conception of human nature through drawing on Enlightenment thinking on the issue. This has support from some of the sciences, but is mainly founded on a philosophical investigation into our hopes, intuition and experience, and an examination of history and cultural variety. There are needs for conditions which allow the flourishing of human capacities. Insights from the Enlightenment show us that people need to exist in free association with others -- not in isolation, and not in relations of domination. There is a need to replace social fetters with social bonds. Therefore any social structure that involves relations of domination -- whether it's the family, a trans-national corporation, gender relations -- has a very heavy burden of proof to bear. It must demonstrate that the benefits it provides outweigh the restrictions it imposes on human capacities. If it can't demonstrate its legitimacy, it should be dismantled.
QUESTION: Right. Can I ask you about your position on the possibility of ecological constraints on the realisation of human needs? Do you think -- even if there were the political will to achieve it -- that it might be impossible, for ecological reasons, to provide the necessary conditions for continued human flourishing?
CHOMSKY: Humans may well be a non-viable organism.
QUESTION: Do you think they are?
CHOMSKY: It's very likely. From an evolutionary point of view, higher intelligence seems to be maladaptive rather than adaptive. Biologically successful organisms have a rigid character and are well adapted to a certain environmental niche. If higher intelligence helped adaptation you would expect it to have arisen over and over again. However, it didn't. It arose in a single, not particularly successful organism, Homo Sapiens. And while the human population exploded, human societies developed in a way that has caused enormous damage to the environment. The human race could destroy itself and much organic life as a result.
QUESTION: Do you think that different social and economic circumstances either block or reinforce certain dispositions -- that, for example, whatever there might be in the way of a natural tendency towards selfish and aggressive behaviour is reinforced by the capitalist market society?
CHOMSKY: There's no doubt about it. Let's take Germany, for example. In the early 20th century Germany was the most advanced area of Western culture -- in music, the arts, science. In the passage of a few years, it entered the absolute depths of human history. Small changes in German society allowed people like Joseph Mengele to flourish rather than people like Einstein and Freud. The market is a radical experiment which violated fundamental human needs and capacities. You can see this in the violent struggles that were required to impose market conditions on people. In the United States, for example, about one sixth of the gross national product, over a trillion dollars per year, is devoted to marketing. Marketing is manipulation and deceit. It tries to turn people into something they aren't -- individuals focused solely on themselves, maximising their consumption of goods that they don't need.
QUESTION: Granted the truth of what you say about our distinctively human capacities for freedom and co-operative action, how come we are so open to that kind of manipulation and deceit? How come we remain both globally and locally so caught up in oppression?
CHOMSKY: It's a serious question. Why are we born free and end up enslaved?
QUESTION: Is there a case here for viewing social factors as more determinant than biological factors?
CHOMSKY: You can't say which factor is more decisive. They interact. Take the example of puberty: small changes in nutrition can modify the onset of puberty by a factor of two, or even terminate it altogether. Or the visual system: in a kitten you can destroy the neural basis for vision simply by not presenting pattern stimulation in the first couple of weeks of its life. However, does this mean that the environment is the decisive force? No. Puberty is a process which human beings undergo at a particular stage of maturation because that's the way they've been designed. You don't undergo puberty because of peer pressure. Likewise, human limbs will not develop into wings rather than arms or legs. The genetic component determines strict limits within which variation is possible. I believe the same is true of our social and mental development.
QUESTION: Your ultimate political goal is anarchistic, the erosion of state institutions and any form of authoritarian control. But you have also recognised the need to defend some forms of state regulation as protection against a wholly unregulated market. Can you say more on how you view this two-edged process of possible political transformation?
CHOMSKY: I'm not in favour of people being in cages. On the other hand I think people ought to be in cages if there's a sabre-toothed tiger wandering around outside and if they go out of the cage the sabre-toothed tiger will kill them. So sometimes there's a justification for cages. That doesn't mean cages are good things. State power is a good example of a necessary cage. There are sabre-toothed tigers outside; they are called trans-national corporations which are among the most tyrannical totalitarian institutions that human society has devised. And there is a cage, namely the state, which to some extent is under popular control. The cage is protecting people from predatory tyrannies so there is a temporary need to maintain the cage, and even to extend the cage.
QUESTION: How do you see the relationship between work and free time in a more liberated society?
CHOMSKY: Polls in the US, Germany and elsewhere have shown that people value free time over material goods. Therefore, there are major propaganda efforts to reverse this. One reason over a trillion dollars a year is spent on marketing in the USA is to try to undermine our natural tendency to want free, liberated time.
I like it, since it engages the debate on my last post, and provides a bridge between my ideas and those of Melinda whose views I also respect.
In the meantime, I'm going to put my thinking cap on and try and work out where I go from here!
This interview is Copyright © 2006 Noam Chomsky
QUESTION: You have argued that any stance one takes on political, economic, social or even personal issues is ultimately based on some conception of human nature. Why is this?
CHOMSKY: Any stance we take is based on some conception of what is good for people. This conception will tacitly presuppose a certain belief as to the constitution of human nature -- human needs and human potential. You might as well bring them out as clearly as possible so that they can be discussed.
QUESTION: According to your view of human nature, all human beings possess certain biological functions endowing them with common mental capacities. How do you defend this position against postmodernist critics who argue that there is no such thing as human nature, and that all attempts to define it are guilty of reading other cultures in the light of Western perceptions and values?
CHOMSKY: Not even the most extreme postmodernist can seriously argue that there is no such thing as human nature. They may argue that the exact properties of human nature are difficult to substantiate -- this is certainly correct. However, it is impossible to coherently argue that an intrinsic, universal human nature does not exist. This amounts to the belief that the next human zygote conceived might just as well develop into a worm or a crab as a human being. Postmodernists might limit their assertion to denying any effect of human nature on our mental make-up -- our values, our knowledge, our wants, etc. This also makes no sense. The postmodernist will argue that a child growing up in New York will develop a certain way of thinking, and if that child had grown up amongst Amazon tribespeople she would have developed a completely different way of thinking. This is true. But we must then ask how a child could develop these different consciousnesses. In whatever environment it finds itself, the child will mentally construct a rich and complex culture on the basis of the extremely scattered and limited phenomena it is exposed to. That consideration tells us (in advance of any detailed knowledge) that there must be an extraordinary directive and organisational component to the mind that is internal. We can begin to see human nature in terms of certain capacities to develop certain mental traits. I think we can go further than this and begin to discover universal aspects of these mental traits which are determined by human nature. I think we can find this in the area of morality. For example, not long ago I talked to people in Amazon tribes and I took it for granted that they have the same conception of vice and virtue as I do. It is only through sharing these values that we were able to interact -- talking about real problems such as being forced out of the jungle by the state authorities. I believe I was correct to assume this: we had no problem communicating although we were as remote as is possible culturally.
QUESTION: Are you suggesting everyone agrees about the nature of vice and virtue?
CHOMSKY: In fact I think they probably have a very high measure of agreement. One strong bit of evidence for this is that everyone -- a Genghis Khan, Himmler, Bill Gates -- creates stories of themselves where they interpret their actions as working for the benefit of human beings. Even at the extreme levels of depravity, the Nazis did not boast that they wanted to kill Jews, but gave crazed justifications -- even that they were acting in 'self-defence'. It is very rare for people to justify their actions by saying 'I'm doing this to maximise my own benefit and I don't care what happens to anybody else'. That would be pathological.
QUESTION: Most people certainly try to offer moral justifications for what they do. But there is also enormous diversity in what they do, and defend as right to do.
CHOMSKY: And there is a lot of variation in people's size. Take a walk through a museum where they have the armour from medieval knights and just look at the size of them: you could barely put a child into that armour. We have the same genes today as people did then, but we are very different because there have been radical changes in diet. This is characteristic of every aspect of organic development. Hence we should not be in the least surprised to discover that it is also characteristic of our social nature, our moral positions and so on. We are biological creatures.
QUESTION: But I think you would agree that not all cultures are equally viable from the standpoint of promoting human fulfilment and wellbeing? Are you wanting to argue that your understanding of human nature can give us a kind of objective understanding of the conditions of human flourishing?
CHOMSKY: Now we're taking an essentialist position which the relativist would contradict. I'm not willing to go that far. We can develop a stronger conception of human nature through drawing on Enlightenment thinking on the issue. This has support from some of the sciences, but is mainly founded on a philosophical investigation into our hopes, intuition and experience, and an examination of history and cultural variety. There are needs for conditions which allow the flourishing of human capacities. Insights from the Enlightenment show us that people need to exist in free association with others -- not in isolation, and not in relations of domination. There is a need to replace social fetters with social bonds. Therefore any social structure that involves relations of domination -- whether it's the family, a trans-national corporation, gender relations -- has a very heavy burden of proof to bear. It must demonstrate that the benefits it provides outweigh the restrictions it imposes on human capacities. If it can't demonstrate its legitimacy, it should be dismantled.
QUESTION: Right. Can I ask you about your position on the possibility of ecological constraints on the realisation of human needs? Do you think -- even if there were the political will to achieve it -- that it might be impossible, for ecological reasons, to provide the necessary conditions for continued human flourishing?
CHOMSKY: Humans may well be a non-viable organism.
QUESTION: Do you think they are?
CHOMSKY: It's very likely. From an evolutionary point of view, higher intelligence seems to be maladaptive rather than adaptive. Biologically successful organisms have a rigid character and are well adapted to a certain environmental niche. If higher intelligence helped adaptation you would expect it to have arisen over and over again. However, it didn't. It arose in a single, not particularly successful organism, Homo Sapiens. And while the human population exploded, human societies developed in a way that has caused enormous damage to the environment. The human race could destroy itself and much organic life as a result.
QUESTION: Do you think that different social and economic circumstances either block or reinforce certain dispositions -- that, for example, whatever there might be in the way of a natural tendency towards selfish and aggressive behaviour is reinforced by the capitalist market society?
CHOMSKY: There's no doubt about it. Let's take Germany, for example. In the early 20th century Germany was the most advanced area of Western culture -- in music, the arts, science. In the passage of a few years, it entered the absolute depths of human history. Small changes in German society allowed people like Joseph Mengele to flourish rather than people like Einstein and Freud. The market is a radical experiment which violated fundamental human needs and capacities. You can see this in the violent struggles that were required to impose market conditions on people. In the United States, for example, about one sixth of the gross national product, over a trillion dollars per year, is devoted to marketing. Marketing is manipulation and deceit. It tries to turn people into something they aren't -- individuals focused solely on themselves, maximising their consumption of goods that they don't need.
QUESTION: Granted the truth of what you say about our distinctively human capacities for freedom and co-operative action, how come we are so open to that kind of manipulation and deceit? How come we remain both globally and locally so caught up in oppression?
CHOMSKY: It's a serious question. Why are we born free and end up enslaved?
QUESTION: Is there a case here for viewing social factors as more determinant than biological factors?
CHOMSKY: You can't say which factor is more decisive. They interact. Take the example of puberty: small changes in nutrition can modify the onset of puberty by a factor of two, or even terminate it altogether. Or the visual system: in a kitten you can destroy the neural basis for vision simply by not presenting pattern stimulation in the first couple of weeks of its life. However, does this mean that the environment is the decisive force? No. Puberty is a process which human beings undergo at a particular stage of maturation because that's the way they've been designed. You don't undergo puberty because of peer pressure. Likewise, human limbs will not develop into wings rather than arms or legs. The genetic component determines strict limits within which variation is possible. I believe the same is true of our social and mental development.
QUESTION: Your ultimate political goal is anarchistic, the erosion of state institutions and any form of authoritarian control. But you have also recognised the need to defend some forms of state regulation as protection against a wholly unregulated market. Can you say more on how you view this two-edged process of possible political transformation?
CHOMSKY: I'm not in favour of people being in cages. On the other hand I think people ought to be in cages if there's a sabre-toothed tiger wandering around outside and if they go out of the cage the sabre-toothed tiger will kill them. So sometimes there's a justification for cages. That doesn't mean cages are good things. State power is a good example of a necessary cage. There are sabre-toothed tigers outside; they are called trans-national corporations which are among the most tyrannical totalitarian institutions that human society has devised. And there is a cage, namely the state, which to some extent is under popular control. The cage is protecting people from predatory tyrannies so there is a temporary need to maintain the cage, and even to extend the cage.
QUESTION: How do you see the relationship between work and free time in a more liberated society?
CHOMSKY: Polls in the US, Germany and elsewhere have shown that people value free time over material goods. Therefore, there are major propaganda efforts to reverse this. One reason over a trillion dollars a year is spent on marketing in the USA is to try to undermine our natural tendency to want free, liberated time.
Does human nature exist?
01/09/08 20:35 Filed in: Philosophy | Human Nature
I’m through with writing social critiques right now. I’m done with determinism too, saying that we are all such weak injured souls because this or that power elite causes us to be so.
I’ve been thinking about change: What we would need to do in order to make the world a better place to live in.
In looking at social and political philosophy there is one question on which all this stuff seems to hinge. I’m not entirely sure that I believe the question in a way, but it’s about the state of human nature itself and what of us is innately human.
So what is human nature? Do humans seek autonomy, freedom and is their nature predisposed towards moral good, an innate desire for a better world or is that some philosopher’s intellectual desire? There are many theories of human nature that appear so ethnocentrically and culturally biased that I would dismiss them out of hand.
Inevitably theories of human nature tend to be predicated on individualist ideas coming from a liberal tradition. I’m not sure if they go anywhere, nor do right or left political views. The left takes us towards the authoritarian state more often than not and these days, the right veers towards laissez faire capitalism that is laissez faire so long as they control it. Free market competition produces winners and losers, and often the winners are the same and there are an awful lot of losers out there. The further left or right one seems to go, the more likely one is to end up with totalitarianism.
But my question is about people. Is there really such a thing as human nature, OR do we live within a consciousness that contains moral values that change and shift as our collective consciousness develops? Development can be disjointed, fractured by revolution and not conform to any Darwinist evolutionary notion. Consciousness may sustain badness as well as good, but I believe that the underlying desire of consciousness is towards social improvement fuelled by humankind’s desire to survive and little more. Survival, like hunger, is a strong natural instinct.
The marketing guys, the media, advertising, and the world of politics know all about consciousness. Their aim is frequently to manipulate it to their own ends or those of their controlling shareholders.
The question of human nature has dogged philosophical, social and political thought forever, but what do you believe? Does it really exist?
I’ve been thinking about change: What we would need to do in order to make the world a better place to live in.
In looking at social and political philosophy there is one question on which all this stuff seems to hinge. I’m not entirely sure that I believe the question in a way, but it’s about the state of human nature itself and what of us is innately human.
So what is human nature? Do humans seek autonomy, freedom and is their nature predisposed towards moral good, an innate desire for a better world or is that some philosopher’s intellectual desire? There are many theories of human nature that appear so ethnocentrically and culturally biased that I would dismiss them out of hand.
Inevitably theories of human nature tend to be predicated on individualist ideas coming from a liberal tradition. I’m not sure if they go anywhere, nor do right or left political views. The left takes us towards the authoritarian state more often than not and these days, the right veers towards laissez faire capitalism that is laissez faire so long as they control it. Free market competition produces winners and losers, and often the winners are the same and there are an awful lot of losers out there. The further left or right one seems to go, the more likely one is to end up with totalitarianism.
But my question is about people. Is there really such a thing as human nature, OR do we live within a consciousness that contains moral values that change and shift as our collective consciousness develops? Development can be disjointed, fractured by revolution and not conform to any Darwinist evolutionary notion. Consciousness may sustain badness as well as good, but I believe that the underlying desire of consciousness is towards social improvement fuelled by humankind’s desire to survive and little more. Survival, like hunger, is a strong natural instinct.
The marketing guys, the media, advertising, and the world of politics know all about consciousness. Their aim is frequently to manipulate it to their own ends or those of their controlling shareholders.
The question of human nature has dogged philosophical, social and political thought forever, but what do you believe? Does it really exist?
Economics may be bad for your health! - Part 2
Benefits of economic growth
Economic growth has long been the goal of conventional economics and politics. It is both the prize and the credo that governs our daily lives. I am unsure as to whether infinite growth is either achievable, sustainable, or for that matter desirable or beneficial to society as a whole.
The arguments in its favour go something like this:
1. Increased consumption is good for you! Greater consumption equals greater prosperity. The economic assumption is that consumption is related to utility, where utility is a measure of the relative satisfaction from or desirability of the consumption of goods. Put very crudely, greater consumption is a measure of success, wealth and good fortune.
2. Increased earnings means increased taxation that in turn creates better healthcare, education and welfare services (or some cynics might say, more money to spend on wars!).
3. Economic growth creates jobs. Higher employment means less poverty. This is something of a fallacy. In some parts of Europe, including where I live in France, there is something called “structural unemployment” that is brought about by structural changes in the underlying needs of the local economy and the geographical distribution and concentrations of the population. In short, there is a mismatch between people living in a place and the employment opportunities available to them there, that is only capable of remedy over time, usually long periods of time.
That’s the theory, at least!
So what’s the problem?
1. Is infinite economic growth sustainable or desirable?
I read a report last year by an economist who predicted that very soon the world's manufacturing capacity will outstrip its ability of consumption. Simply put that means soon we will be able to make more than we need or can ever hope to use. So what happens then?
If you have a house, two cars and all the other things you need, why would you want to own more houses, or three cars, or even two washing machines? Infinite growth in consumption makes no sense. Does increased ownership lead to greater utility or satisfaction? Of course, it does not and there is a law of diminishing returns when people have more money than things to spend it on. That is to say, the utility of ownership diminishes, and when that happens so does the value of goods, which in turn creates more economic pressures.
For sections of the population who experience dire poverty and unemployment, economic growth may provide a remedy, but the evidence is that high economic growth can cause greater inequality and a real increase in relative poverty (Brookings Institution 2007), since it is the better educated and already wealthy that tend to benefit from economic growth rather than the less well off.
2. Damage to the environment through increased pollution that is a consequence of economic growth is becoming a real problem for the entire world. Of course, a benefit of growth might be the investment in technologies that create less pollution. To-date this appears to have been viewed as a lower priority than the pursuit of wealth for its own sake.
3. Increased inequality gives rise to more crimes and social problems. Between 1960 and 1990 the US crime rate went up by some 300%. While crime rates in the USA may have peaked out now, there is nevertheless a strong correlation between economic growth and increasing crime rates.
4. High economic growth is a slave-driver and has led to longer hours worked with a commensurate increase in personal and social anxiety. An economist might argue that this reflects the fact that people value money more than leisure or quality of life. How would they know when they have no leisure? That takes me to my next point…
5. The American Medical Association maintains that stress is a significant determinant in 80% of all our illnesses (that is not to say it’s the only cause). It could be argued that heart disease, obesity and stress related illnesses are a direct consequence of economic growth.
So what of increased prosperity? What of economic growth?
They have created as many new problems as they have solved.
It may be time to look for a better way.
I do not believe that politics holds all the answers either. Left-wing, right-wing or centrist mass politics have all shown themselves to be deeply flawed.
It is not something that the cult of the presidential individual can possibly apprehend. Barrack Obama or John McCain will make no difference, nor will Gordon Brown or Nicholas Sarkozy. I am unsure as to how well the ideology of nation states will serve the world in the long-term either.
One thing is for sure, if we want a better world, then we will all have to take responsibility for its wellbeing, all of us, without exception. That is the underlying principal of true democracy that we claim to hold so dear. It is not enough, as we have in the past, to argue for political freedom alone; there is social, personal and psychological freedom to consider too.
Economic growth is not the Holy Grail.
So what next?
Economic growth has long been the goal of conventional economics and politics. It is both the prize and the credo that governs our daily lives. I am unsure as to whether infinite growth is either achievable, sustainable, or for that matter desirable or beneficial to society as a whole.
The arguments in its favour go something like this:
1. Increased consumption is good for you! Greater consumption equals greater prosperity. The economic assumption is that consumption is related to utility, where utility is a measure of the relative satisfaction from or desirability of the consumption of goods. Put very crudely, greater consumption is a measure of success, wealth and good fortune.
2. Increased earnings means increased taxation that in turn creates better healthcare, education and welfare services (or some cynics might say, more money to spend on wars!).
3. Economic growth creates jobs. Higher employment means less poverty. This is something of a fallacy. In some parts of Europe, including where I live in France, there is something called “structural unemployment” that is brought about by structural changes in the underlying needs of the local economy and the geographical distribution and concentrations of the population. In short, there is a mismatch between people living in a place and the employment opportunities available to them there, that is only capable of remedy over time, usually long periods of time.
That’s the theory, at least!
So what’s the problem?
1. Is infinite economic growth sustainable or desirable?
I read a report last year by an economist who predicted that very soon the world's manufacturing capacity will outstrip its ability of consumption. Simply put that means soon we will be able to make more than we need or can ever hope to use. So what happens then?
If you have a house, two cars and all the other things you need, why would you want to own more houses, or three cars, or even two washing machines? Infinite growth in consumption makes no sense. Does increased ownership lead to greater utility or satisfaction? Of course, it does not and there is a law of diminishing returns when people have more money than things to spend it on. That is to say, the utility of ownership diminishes, and when that happens so does the value of goods, which in turn creates more economic pressures.
For sections of the population who experience dire poverty and unemployment, economic growth may provide a remedy, but the evidence is that high economic growth can cause greater inequality and a real increase in relative poverty (Brookings Institution 2007), since it is the better educated and already wealthy that tend to benefit from economic growth rather than the less well off.
2. Damage to the environment through increased pollution that is a consequence of economic growth is becoming a real problem for the entire world. Of course, a benefit of growth might be the investment in technologies that create less pollution. To-date this appears to have been viewed as a lower priority than the pursuit of wealth for its own sake.
3. Increased inequality gives rise to more crimes and social problems. Between 1960 and 1990 the US crime rate went up by some 300%. While crime rates in the USA may have peaked out now, there is nevertheless a strong correlation between economic growth and increasing crime rates.
4. High economic growth is a slave-driver and has led to longer hours worked with a commensurate increase in personal and social anxiety. An economist might argue that this reflects the fact that people value money more than leisure or quality of life. How would they know when they have no leisure? That takes me to my next point…
5. The American Medical Association maintains that stress is a significant determinant in 80% of all our illnesses (that is not to say it’s the only cause). It could be argued that heart disease, obesity and stress related illnesses are a direct consequence of economic growth.
So what of increased prosperity? What of economic growth?
They have created as many new problems as they have solved.
It may be time to look for a better way.
I do not believe that politics holds all the answers either. Left-wing, right-wing or centrist mass politics have all shown themselves to be deeply flawed.
It is not something that the cult of the presidential individual can possibly apprehend. Barrack Obama or John McCain will make no difference, nor will Gordon Brown or Nicholas Sarkozy. I am unsure as to how well the ideology of nation states will serve the world in the long-term either.
One thing is for sure, if we want a better world, then we will all have to take responsibility for its wellbeing, all of us, without exception. That is the underlying principal of true democracy that we claim to hold so dear. It is not enough, as we have in the past, to argue for political freedom alone; there is social, personal and psychological freedom to consider too.
Economic growth is not the Holy Grail.
So what next?
Economics may be bad for your health! - Part 1
Recession! What recession?
So what is this new economic crisis? Are we moving towards the Armageddon of western economics? What does and will recession mean?
Economists define recession as a decline in the production of gross domestic product for six-months based on measures taken in two three month periods.
Neither the USA nor the UK are experiencing what is described as “negative growth” currently, although there is a widely held belief that we may be heading towards recession.
A lot of factors are being cited as the cause of our current economic difficulties, among which are:
1. The crash in the housing market.
The boom in the housing market was an absurd phenomenon.
House prices in the UK were rising at rates of more than six times the rate of inflation in some years.
Suddenly the world was awash with property millionaires. Someone who had bought a London house for £72,000 ($144,000) in 1983 and stayed put, woke up to find their property is worth £1.6 million in 2007! ($3.2 million). A new two bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Oxford, close to a railway line came onto the market last year at around £500,000 ($1 million). Think about it, one million dollars for a small apartment in a small city outside London!
The average age of a first time house buyer is currently somewhere in the mid-thirties age range. So where do the rest live? How do teachers, nurses, doctors, police and essential service staff ever afford these prices? The answer is they don’t.
It had to stop, and stop it did. House prices are going down in the UK. Economic reports from the USA say that house prices there are over-valued by at least 40%, although by UK standards house prices in the USA look dirt-cheap! Prices have fallen by up to 25% in the past year in (some parts of) the USA.
House price equity in an overblown, pumped-up market is fool’s gold. It is wealth created by a market without any corresponding new value. It has provided a mirage of prosperity by fuelling consumer spending and debt.
To put all this in perspective, the average house price in the UK (across all regions) is about £220k ($440k), the average salary is somewhere in the region of £22k - £26k ($44k - $52$k).
So people have taken risks with borrowing, sometimes taking out loans of between 8 and 10 times their annual salaries in order to own a home. It should come as no surprise therefore that the housing market is in deep trouble.
2. So-called high-risk lending, the “sub-prime” market is collapsing. Sub-prime lending involves lending money for greater returns to poorer people who would not otherwise be able to afford conventional home loans. It’s an economic contradiction that sustains poverty. If one is poor access to money comes at a higher price than if one is rich.
Falling house prices in the USA and to some extent, the UK, means a risk of negative home equity at a very high price. Home repossessions are increasing fast. There is an increasing rate of defaults that means that banks lose money and so do the mortgage companies.
3. So we have:
• Shortage of mortgage funding and banks teetering on the edge of solvency
• Decline in market confidence that affects all sectors of the economy
• Property prices that became vastly overvalued
• Increase in supply accompanying falling demand, with housing costs still running at levels in the UK that are inaccessible to average wage earners, young people and essential service providers
4. Next! There’s the ever-increasing oil price pushing up costs. There is the rising cost of food too that is not necessarily all tied to the cost of oil.
5. One more…the booming house price mirage fuelled consumer borrowing. A falling house market and lowered confidence in the rest of the economy means that people are taking on less debt and looking to save. This in turn means lower consumer spending. Lower consumer spending means lower production that increases the chance of a recession. It is interesting to me that that financial prudence, as I might see it, and a move away from consumption for consumption’s sake has an adverse economic consequence. I’ll come back to that in part 2.
Summary
There are a number of factors involved in our current economic difficulties, but the two main issues as I see them are the decline of an over-heated housing market and a decrease in consumer spending.
Part 2 will be about whether economic growth is beneficial to us all. My feelings are that it is not such a good thing after all. We may need to change the way we view our economic lives.
So what is this new economic crisis? Are we moving towards the Armageddon of western economics? What does and will recession mean?
Economists define recession as a decline in the production of gross domestic product for six-months based on measures taken in two three month periods.
Neither the USA nor the UK are experiencing what is described as “negative growth” currently, although there is a widely held belief that we may be heading towards recession.
A lot of factors are being cited as the cause of our current economic difficulties, among which are:
1. The crash in the housing market.
The boom in the housing market was an absurd phenomenon.
House prices in the UK were rising at rates of more than six times the rate of inflation in some years.
Suddenly the world was awash with property millionaires. Someone who had bought a London house for £72,000 ($144,000) in 1983 and stayed put, woke up to find their property is worth £1.6 million in 2007! ($3.2 million). A new two bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Oxford, close to a railway line came onto the market last year at around £500,000 ($1 million). Think about it, one million dollars for a small apartment in a small city outside London!
The average age of a first time house buyer is currently somewhere in the mid-thirties age range. So where do the rest live? How do teachers, nurses, doctors, police and essential service staff ever afford these prices? The answer is they don’t.
It had to stop, and stop it did. House prices are going down in the UK. Economic reports from the USA say that house prices there are over-valued by at least 40%, although by UK standards house prices in the USA look dirt-cheap! Prices have fallen by up to 25% in the past year in (some parts of) the USA.
House price equity in an overblown, pumped-up market is fool’s gold. It is wealth created by a market without any corresponding new value. It has provided a mirage of prosperity by fuelling consumer spending and debt.
To put all this in perspective, the average house price in the UK (across all regions) is about £220k ($440k), the average salary is somewhere in the region of £22k - £26k ($44k - $52$k).
So people have taken risks with borrowing, sometimes taking out loans of between 8 and 10 times their annual salaries in order to own a home. It should come as no surprise therefore that the housing market is in deep trouble.
2. So-called high-risk lending, the “sub-prime” market is collapsing. Sub-prime lending involves lending money for greater returns to poorer people who would not otherwise be able to afford conventional home loans. It’s an economic contradiction that sustains poverty. If one is poor access to money comes at a higher price than if one is rich.
Falling house prices in the USA and to some extent, the UK, means a risk of negative home equity at a very high price. Home repossessions are increasing fast. There is an increasing rate of defaults that means that banks lose money and so do the mortgage companies.
3. So we have:
• Shortage of mortgage funding and banks teetering on the edge of solvency
• Decline in market confidence that affects all sectors of the economy
• Property prices that became vastly overvalued
• Increase in supply accompanying falling demand, with housing costs still running at levels in the UK that are inaccessible to average wage earners, young people and essential service providers
4. Next! There’s the ever-increasing oil price pushing up costs. There is the rising cost of food too that is not necessarily all tied to the cost of oil.
5. One more…the booming house price mirage fuelled consumer borrowing. A falling house market and lowered confidence in the rest of the economy means that people are taking on less debt and looking to save. This in turn means lower consumer spending. Lower consumer spending means lower production that increases the chance of a recession. It is interesting to me that that financial prudence, as I might see it, and a move away from consumption for consumption’s sake has an adverse economic consequence. I’ll come back to that in part 2.
Summary
There are a number of factors involved in our current economic difficulties, but the two main issues as I see them are the decline of an over-heated housing market and a decrease in consumer spending.
Part 2 will be about whether economic growth is beneficial to us all. My feelings are that it is not such a good thing after all. We may need to change the way we view our economic lives.
Isn't it about time we asked...?
Isn’t it about time we asked:
1. Why religions which teach acceptance, tolerance and love, achieve little more than racial and social divisiveness and hatred?
2. Why there is still poverty, famine and starvation in a world that is capable of producing all that it needs for everyone?
3. Why over a million people have been killed in a war in Iraq that was allegedly about that country producing Weapons of Mass Destruction when there were none?
4. Why war is waged against Iraq in the cause of the war against terror when the Bin Ladens were an enemy of Saddam Hussein, but one-time friends of the Bush family?
5. Why in the war against Iraq, the allied forces went in and protected the Ministry of Oil and its oil wells and left that country’s cultural and historical heritage to looters?
6. Why we support infinite economic expansion that is impossible to sustain and makes us into economic slaves fraught with anxiety in its service?
7. Why we support authoritarian social and political structures that have failed us time and time again, rather than choosing social, personal and psychological freedom, and exercising responsibility for the world we live in?
8. Why ownership, being successful and making money is preferable to loving, personal relationships, being creative and building real quality of life?
9. Why Britons and Americans on average now spend around a working day or month or more, making friends on MySpace and Facebook rather than making friends in real life? (How many of your friends on social networks would give up a day to help you with a real problem in your life?)
10. Why we support commodity capitalism that turns everyone into “things” in support of its values of selfishness and greed and undermines the spirit of trust and cooperative human development?
11. What lasting benefit America has achieved for the world in any war it has waged since 1945? (Which wars have been won and for what?)
12. What the hell we are doing?
So what are we doing and thinking? It feels like time for change. Now who is going to be the first to tell me that I’m naïve and idealistic?
Back to the Future, part 1 - Where is it?
07/05/08 07:44 Filed in: Future
Two things recently inspired me to write this blog. The first was a work project that I had undertaken recently; the second was a video by the late Ian Xel Lungold on the Mayan calendar that I watched recently with great fascination.
The Mayan calendar, that can be interpreted in hindsight to have portended many of the great events and changes in our history, runs out in 2012. Many have interpreted this to be something of a watershed, a turning point for mankind; a time of some massive and fundamental changes in the world. Not the end of the world by any means, but perhaps the beginning of some different sort of world. I can believe that and feel some optimism about it too. I hope…
Economists predict that very soon the world's manufacturing capacity will outstrip its ability of consumption. Simply put that means soon we will be able to make more than we need or can ever hope to use. So what happens then? What happens to our economic, social and political systems that are already beginning to creak under the strain of change? What happens to stock exchanges and money? If you have a career in the financial services industry and are looking to change, now might be a good time to consider that move.
The speed of technology change has accelerated beyond belief. I started my career in computing long ago. What took years at the outset of my career can now happen in minutes, even seconds. At the beginning of this piece I talked about a recent work project of mine. Without wishing to mention my client's name, it was one of the world's largest mobile phone manufacturers. This company now launches a new mobile phone handset at the rate of one a month. Yes, one new mobile phone each and every month. What this means is that they have decided that the life of an average mobile phone to be just a year; from product launch to obsolescence in a year! They don't even call some of them mobile phones anymore; they are "multi-media communications computers!" Even my own phone takes photographs, keeps a calendar, has an MP3 player…what else…? Oh yes! Then there's an FM radio in it as well. But predominantly I use it to make phone calls and send text messages. It's well-made, well-designed and reliable so why would I wish to change it in a year? I have kept my last couple of mobile phones for a good few years and see no reason to consume more for consumption's sake.
But speed of change has accelerated beyond our conception of what was possible just a few years back, and it is accelerating exponentially all the time. Our knowledge, belief, economic and manufacturing systems are moving at a speed far faster than our social and political systems can keep pace. It's no small wonder that our social structures are beginning to creak and that our political systems seem to be holding on by a thread. It's no romantic illusion either. If you don't believe it then go make yourself a very strong cup of coffee and wake up!
What implications does this have for us ordinary mortals? Do you remember that idea about having a career? I am reminded of a couple of conversations recently one with a law and psychology graduate friend turned farmer, now turned national training expert, and the guy who moved me into my home, the removal guy was an Oxford-educated, ex stockbroker. Then there's me, I call myself a management consultant to cover a variety of sins! So what am I? Well, I'm a change, transformation and transition specialist, a programme director, a turnaround person, an expert in information technology and telecommunications, a venture capital appraiser, a psychologist, an ex-chairman of a large mental health project, an ex-chief executive of a software company, a general manager, a communications specialist, a facilitator, a strategic planner and a strategic marketing expert…and sometimes a writer…done a bit of broadcasting, some futures consulting…Okay so how many was that? More than ten for sure! Get the picture?
There are no single careers anymore. Every single knowledge-based discipline with which mankind is involved is moving at the speed of light or else it's moving fast towards obsolescence, like my mobile phone and that's just six months old now!
Take another example…a safe profession; let's be a doctor, a physician. That's an interesting trade, one that I might suggest controversially is more regulated and controlled by the economic interests of the pharmaceutical industry than the social needs of mankind. It's those guys who currently dictate the speed of medical developments and progress, but even that world is about to be busted apart. We have the genome now, a map of our physical bodily universe – a means of understanding our physical condition and potentially the knowledge to be able to cure its ills, we have the means to manufacture chromosomes, and last year it was announced that a scientist had manufactured a living organism synthetically in a laboratory (Guardian newspaper, 6 September 2007). So what will a doctor's profession be in future? If a doctor is to keep pace with developments in medicine and our world of physical knowledge then it is conceivable that she might have to undergo continuous training and education for her entire working life. Or else she might choose to just carry on writing those prescriptions that keep the pharmaceutical industry plump and happy. Somehow I doubt that will happen.
Our world is changing. It's getting better too. As Lungold points out we are transcending an age of ethics in corporate responsibility: one where the bad guys are being weeded out and held to account. I'll just run a quick internet search on recent corporate scandals and see who we can come up with. The list on Wikipedia, mainly for those qualifying as prize-winners in "imaginary arithmetic", include Enron, Barings Bank, Merrill Lynch, AIG, WorldCom, Kmart and there's even a couple of very big pharmaceutical companies in there too. It's a long list now. But I simply want to make the point that businesses who dishonestly exploit their customers or their shareholders for their own financial benefit or power interests are going to fail in a world where ethics, social and personal responsibility are coming to be recognised as universal values. It's not before time and I'll say more about time itself here too.
Some people may find this speed of change frightening; certainly it is awe-inspiring. It's no wonder that we feel that change is running past us; that we feel we can't keep up with it any more.
Lungold talks about this very well, about the limitations of mind. He says rightly that the mind is man's survival equipment. It works slowly and it's like a pattern recognition engine detecting similarities and differences to build a picture of our world. It does construct knowledge as pictures too, pictures taking the form of all our senses: sight, sound, taste, smell and physical experience. It works at about the speed of twenty-four frames per second, that means we can take twenty-four decisions a second in a world where billions of decisions are being taken each and every second. Lungold cleverly points out that the mind is limited in speed and easily deceived, that the guys who do special effects in the movies already know this well. I believe Lungold was on the right track.
So what do we use instead? Lungold and I believe the same thing here and it's called intuition. Intuition is our own sense of the world, and repository of inner personal knowledge, it's our ability to sense and know immediately without reasoning. It's what the very best sportsmen know and use all the time. Just think of David Beckham playing soccer, do you think that he's using his mind like "click-decide, click-decide, click-decide"? No, he has very high speed intuition and that combined with his enormous and well coordinated physical abilities makes him one of the greatest footballers there is; the same goes for great, basketball players and lots of other sportsmen too. I'll write more later about intuition and my current sense of it later. Important questions for me are how one gets in touch and stays in touch with intuition. I'm working on it and I am already very intuitive!
So what's going to happen and why 2012? Frankly, I don't know. I'm not a futurist or a soothsayer. I'm not that sure about 2012 either, but big change will happen and happen soon enough. It will be to coin that overused phrase and now hackneyed cliché, first used by Thomas Kuhn to describe the revolutions that occurred in the world of science, a massive paradigm shift in our entire world. (Brother, can you spare me a paradigm?) It will be an entire shift, not an evolution, but a revolution in our consciousness. It may be a whole series of shifts, who can tell? But one thing is for sure, this post-industrial world we inhabit will go through some big changes and it will be soon and it will be fast.
Time as a universal accurate concept itself took hold then because it was what was used to control and regulate the workforce. Perhaps in a post-industrial age, our concept of time may change. The best I would hope for is that time will be used no longer to oppress our daily existence, but perhaps it might embrace those Mayan concepts too in a new and better world.
NB The video "The Mayan Calendar comes North parts 1 and 2" presented by the late Ian Xel Lungold is available to view for free on Google.