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

The Race to the Bottom?

Why on earth would anyone want to go back to the neocons? 

Do they want the kind of economic policy that shrinks the middle class even more and makes billionaires of CEOs.?!

Change takes time. 

The economic divide really took hold with the Reagan/Thatcher philosophy and since then we've been working in a siphon-up rather than trickle-down economy.

The extremely wealthy earn interest on our debts - that is their "work", their contribution. They do not reinvest in business ventures that employ people. They invest the tax cuts - promised them by the Conservative in return for political support - in machines that replace employees or in stock options to bump up the bonus cheques. They enjoy lives of influence and easy privilege while the hardworking person is scared to complain about wages for fear of losing his or her job, defaulting on mortgage or rent, or payments for that big shiny new RAM truck. 

Still, so many hardworking people vote Conservative and continue to support the kind of economics that breaks their backs while cutting their social services and other public benefits. Is it merely that they resent sharing social goods and they'd rather make themselves worse off to prevent sharing the wealth with others? Is it that they'd rather lash out at women or minorities than the real causes of their struggle, the wealth divide? Or is it they'd rather lash out at well intentioned middle class "intellectuals", calling them elitist? Let's hope not! That's the politics of resentment, the race to the bottom!

The Yin and Yang of Politics

Have you noticed that almost every pundit and politician on the rise today is channelling machismo as some sort of answer to a huge problem, namely  _________________ ?

The interconnected Memes of this Machismo (Yang) Politics are

1. Lone Cowboy Individualism 
2. Military style Tribalism and Nationalism (zero sum competition)
3. Domination of Nature
4. A rugged outdoorsy manhood (rather than a cultured intellectualism)
5. The sense of being entitled not to have to edit one's own pronouncements or check one's own behaviours, or to receive more than to give care, regardless of effects on the wellbeing of others.

If you're Jordan Peterson or a supporter of his, the huge problem is Political Correctness and its extreme danger to freedom of speech. Any emphasis on equity evokes his fear that we are in a slide toward post-modern Marxist Maoist Totalitarianism. And he will threaten to sue you for using your freedom of speech to criticize him.

If you're a person who's lost his or her job, you might think that the huge problem is immigration and globalism. Or maybe you think government regulations that are meant to protect the environment and citizens are limiting local investments in new industry and reducing job growth. But did you consider that we are in an era of great technological change and that the mandate of corporations is to increase production efficiencies (where labour is considered another expense cutting into profits)?   In fact, more production is going on in the US now than in the past - but much of it is automated. The technology has changed so the economic system must adapt or leave people behind.

Meanwhile, economists believe that Free Trade improves the economy. It has also been shown that diversity improves outcomes for innovation. And without immigration, the average age of the citizenry will increase to the point that there are nearly as many retirees as working people (paying the taxes that pay for the old age benefits).  

The huge problem is that the technology has changed but the economic system has not changed. We produce more than we need, much of it disposable or wasted. We pollute the environment with producing it. Those that have jobs, many are what we know to be "bullsh*t" jobs that would not be necessary if large companies and governments were not piled high in unnecessary bureaucratic processes. All but a few jobs can be automated and will be in the future. What happens to wage labour and the relevance of "work ethic" then? 

And what of Yin politics?

The Memes of Feminine (Yin) Politics

1. Interconnectedness (individual human potential cannot be realized apart from society, culture, economics and technology)
2. Pluralism and Diversity (not a zero sum but a win-win)
3. Environmentalism, Sustainable Development
4. Resilience and the importance of ongoing learning

To be honest, I don't know if I'd really call the above Yin or feminine or feminist. The reason I did so is because they seem to be the memes disparaged or neglected by the resurgent patriarchy. 

I take it to be pretty self-evident that no one's potential can be realized apart from society, culture, economics and technology. Even so, neuro-palaeontology confirms it. We are immersed, regardless of whatever political system we live in.

Given the fact that we live in an ineluctably global economic system, we need to be more tolerant of diversity. Not so tolerant that we tolerate a lack of tolerance or abuse, though. 

We cannot continue to carry on producing in excess of what we need or that nature can give or absorb.

Exploratory curiosity and learning is what makes us human, gives us meaning and helps us to adapt. We are not adapting by insisting on a set idea of "human nature". Our flourishing and resilience, our strengths, lie in our creative responsiveness and adaptability. We change. Culture changes. Narrative that doesn't change becomes decrepit and toxic.

Two Misleading Intellectual Habits

Two misleading and persistent intellectual habits dominate thinking and much of politics:

1. The myth of the isolated mind and 
2. The legacy of the theological divide.

1. The myth of the isolated mind is the belief that human minds are purely private, locked within our skulls. Merlin Donald, neuro-paleontologist, demonstrates the flimsiness of the idea in his remarkable book, A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness. (Here's a review.) He makes it clear that no human beings can develop their human cognitive potential in the absence of culture. Cognition and culture are mutually dependent. Their dependence raises some questions about ethical responsibility, personal freedom, freedom of speech and of other areas in which people are ineluctably interdependent actors whose sense of meaning and justice has changed throughout history and varied across cultures.

2. The theological divide separates heaven and earth. Here is how it looked before Nietzsche:

• Heaven | Earth
• Form | Matter
• Spirit | Nature
• Mind | Body
• Male ♂| Female ♀
• Order | Chaos
• Reason | Emotion
• Light | Dark
• Logos | Eros
• Transcendent | Immanent
• Active | Passive
• Eternal | Temporal (finite, changeable)
• Divine intellect | Randomness (unpredictability)

Here's how it looks now from the "secular" point of view: 

• Heaven | Earth
• Form | Matter
• Spirit | Nature
• Mind | Body
• Male ♂| Female ♀
• Order | Chaos
• Reason | Emotion
• Light | Dark
• Logos | Eros
• Transcendent | Immanent
• Active | Passive
• Eternal | Temporal (finite, changeable)
• Laws of (mechanical) Nature | Randomness (unpredictability)

Much of the ontological edifice of theology remains intact. It's basically a decapitated theology. 

But as thinkers such as Stuart Kauffman and Manuel DeLanda convincingly show (they each have many lectures, interviews and short talks on line if you're interested), there is now an approach that makes matter dynamic rather than a passive receptacle of form or logos or laws of nature and that reinstates the ontological status of virtual or potential. It looks more like this:

• Evolving Cosmos
• Self-organizing Matter
• Dynamic Nature
• Sentient, encultured Body
• Knowledge that reason cannot work without emotion
• Virtual and real complement each other 
• Chaos and complexity theories
• Intrinsic unpredictability in evolutionary biology (non-deterministic)

This new, emerging approach might help us feel at home in nature and on this planet in a more sustainable and responsible way.

What explains the popularity of "strong man" leaders?

If you look back over history at periods where there is huge social upheaval, you can see it is usually correlated with technological change. Technological changes cause social changes because they alter the way that people need to interact with each other to get and distribute what we need to live and make our livelihoods. This changes the power relationships in society. It looks like this:

Technological change leads to

Changes in ways people need to produce and distribute stuff, which lead to
Changes in social power relationships, which lead to
Changes in what is acceptable to believe is "natural" or "just" in social arrangements.

It's been happening since prehistory.

Here are a couple of relatively recent examples:

1. The power of Rome and the priestly class was undercut by the invention of the printing press.
2. "Women's liberation" occurred when new household technology and the invention of the pill freed them up from domestic work and allowed them more of an involvement in the public sphere. 

Unfortunately, there is usually some kind of backlash from the rulers that are being displaced by the changes:

1. The Inquisition (the witch burning times) followed the invention of the printing press.
2. Patriarchal backlashes in the form of religious or demagogic pronouncements or regressive legislation have dogged women's efforts to have more of a public voice .

After some horrific and largely unnecessary suffering - witch burnings, stonings, wars, civil wars, for example - things generally fall into place the for better (or worse).

But note that the upheaval is not caused by individual leaders of change movements (e.g., Luther) but by social conditions that created the possibility of their messages becoming "acceptable" to believe, rather than heretical, offensive or nonsensical. I believe this happens when rigid insistence on outdated status quo explanations leads to toxic social state.

OK, so if that's clear, we begin to understand where we're at now. MASSIVE technological change: Factory automation, instant global communication, high speed transportation, increasingly viable green technologies. In other words, a global economy that threatens to thoroughly disenfranchise an even greater number of people who will be without work in what remains a wage-based economy. Erosion of social supports in favour of tax cuts - where the benefits go to the already very well off - continues to shrink the middle class while the wage gap grows and grows.

So what are today's "heretics" shouting by way of a response to these changes and what has been the backlash to them? What is becoming acceptable to believe and how is it being resisted?

The heretics are shouting "environmental sustainability", "flatter organizations", "universal income / equity", "cultural diversity" while emphasizing the importance of developing responsiveness (rather than aggressiveness) for resilience.

The backlash is shouting "jobs before the environment", "hierarchy is natural", "no freeloaders",  "your culture threatens rather than enhances my culture", while gunning for aggressive individualism.

So there we have the rise to prominence of people like Trump or other "big, loud guy" leaders who hear and capitalize (very literally) on the backlash. The voices of the backlash come from the plutocracy, from men with an unearned sense of entitlement, and from the lower-middle class who fear loss of social position if those they consider below them (women, minorities) are on the rise. 

e.g., "Spencer and other alt-right leaders see Donald Trump’s rise as the first step towards a whites-only state. "Our lived experience is being a young, white person in 21st century America, [and] seeing your identity be demeaned,” Spencer said. “I’ve lived in this multicultural mess for years and I’m trying to get out of it." - The Atlantic, "Rebranding White Nationalism"  italics added