Anyone missing democracy yet?

The global corporate mafia has taken over many of our democratic institutions with the help of Reagan and Thatcher's ideologies and will continue to do so. It can't be completely stopped but its damaging influence can be lessened. How? If we elect parties working to limit its damaging influence rather than parties that assist it in the takeover. 

Disintegration

The fabric of the world is disintegrating and that’s hardly reducible to arguments about gender, no matter what stance you take on gender issues. It’s climate change, it’s the global economy, it’s the balance of power and powerful bad actors. Look there. Meanwhile, let people be who they want. It’s their life to live. 

Family bedrock values have meant nothing forever, thanks to the Alphas, their followers, their apologists, their capacity to provoke tribalism. And here we are.

More guts than brains

A while back I read that the physiological reactions of engrossed spectators at the sports stadium are the same as those of gorillas or chimps warding off threats from another tribe. People are very loyal to their favourite teams. There a very deep instinctive tribal response. Anything that can be given an identifying marker - team, nation, religion, political party, lifestyle brand, etc., can elicit the kind of loyalty that suppresses individual reasoning in the service of clan loyalty and group homogenization.

Advertising can work on those strong basic instincts to present "identities" that link people to consumer tribes of the marketers' making. They don't just stop at brand but can get into politics to support the kind of reactions and herd mind that ensure that people will elect governments more likely to have economic and tax policies that support corporations. For example, ads that stress freedom and independence through purchasing for "manly" men and promote a sort of non-intellectual or brute machismo are more likely to sway people rightward than leftward given that social support systems are not on the radar of lone cowboy individualists. Ironically, these memes have the effect of homogenizing and infantilizing perspectives, not of encouraging adult individual thought.

Bear this in mind when you see commercials. I've noted an alarming change in tone, especially in terms of the depiction of gender. We seem to be following a backward trend. Devolution.

Rousing nationalist passion or reviving historical gender stereotypes is inconsistent with looking forward to a future with a modern, sustainable functioning economy in a global marketplace. We need more tolerance, open-ended thinking, more comfort with ambiguity, more agility and more responsiveness. We need a more pluralistic and inclusive sense of humanity and respect for nature, more brains than guts or glory.

Belief Systems that Provide a False Sense of Control or Safety

 Some examples of stress-relieving beliefs with longterm tragic consequences:

• Dominionism - The idea that whatever we do to the planet is OK since our tribal god created it for cosmically special us
• Prometheanism - The falsely utopian idea that the model of understanding nature in mechanical terms that is used in reductionist science allows us to predict and control everything and order it to our ends
• Newageism - The idea that we can be in complete control of our destiny through right thinking and feeling.

What each of these has in common is that it answers the very understandable fear of natural contingencies and one way or another emphasizes the human capacity to control natural circumstances or ignore them without consequence. More importantly, each of these views sanctifies a sense of entitlement to manipulate things to our own ends, without actually specifying any worthwhile ends. That puts us on a cynical hamster wheel to nowhere.

Beliefs like these might have been useful in the past to sustain optimism and creative momentum. But we're now so ramped up that we've lost sight of the optimism, overlook the beyond-human natural, and fail to develop a healthy reverence for nature and the mystery of existence. We now in need of new guiding narratives rooted in a real and grounded relationship to the world.

The world is giving us a reality check.

Recommended Articles

 George Monbiot - Neoliberal Economics - the root of all our problems  - The Guardian

A superb summary of the problems that we are facing as a result of the economics of Reagan and Thatcher.

E Saez and G Zucman - The Triumph of Injustice - How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay

A graphic description of the effect of the reduction of corporate taxes on equality. Turns out that in the US, corporations contribute less than the working class.

Angela Nagle - The Lost Boys - The Atlantic

Describes the belief of adherents to the Alt Right that civilization is in decline and that feminism and egalitarianism are to blame.

Paul Thagard - Jordan Peterson's Murky Maps of Meaning - Psychology Today

Assesses Peterson's psychological theories in the light of actual research in the areas he covers and concludes that "Peterson's ideas are a mishmash of banal self-help, amateur philosophy, superfluous Christian mythology, evidence-free Jungian psychology, and toxic individualistic politics." 

Grant Maxwell - Why are so many young men drawn to Peterson's Intellectual Misogyny?

Maxwell offers a straightforward critique of Jordan Peterson as an champion of the status quo who appeals to the adolescent aspects of masculinity, likening his appeal to that of Trump. 

Stuart Kauffman - Reinventing The Sacred - Beyond Reductonism

This is a fascinating two hour lecture delivered by Stuart Kauffman explaining his ideas about science, the error of scientific reductionism (the belief that everything can be explained in terms of matter and the laws of physics), and the sacred.

Michael Hudson - The Vocabulary of Economic Deception

Michael Hudson is interviewed about his book, J is for Junk Economics. He says today's economists and financial institutions "...try to portray their product – in this case, neoliberal economics, dismantling protection of the environment, dismantling consumer protection and stopping of prosecution of financial fraud – as ‘wealth creation’ instead of impoverishment and austerity for the economy at large. So basically, my book reviews the economic vocabulary and language people use to perceive reality."

Ann Applebaum - The Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

Ann Applebaum is interviewed about her book, The Twilight of Democracy, where she looks at the causes of the rise of the authoritarian right or "new right".

Why Conservative Economic Policy is the Root of our Economic Troubles

The core principles of conservative economic policy (aka neoliberalism):

1. Reduce taxes for the rich in the hope that they will invest and create jobs. WRONG: This policy has negative results in the age of automation, offshoring and financial tricks. Employees' wages cut into profits and the employers want to keep them low or non-existent. This only WIDENS the gap between rich and poor and reduces money available to the government to make needed infrastructure improvements, for education, healthcare, social support services, etc.

Neoliberal Economics in a Nutshell

Economically, we should all know by now that Neoliberal Economic Policy favoured by Republicans (and Conservatives) only ultimately siphons money up from the average tax payer to the very rich and leaves infrastructure dwindling away - except for Police and Military (who replaced "Social Programs") - and leaves the poor without anything.

That is why the income gap has been growing since the era of Reagan and Thatcher - and that is why a lot of things that you see now are happening