The economics of complacency

Complacency is an emotional condition. Those with are always scared of being without. Such fear demotivates. And so we choose not to think about it. Someone else will deal with the threats to life, we have more than enough to cope with in getting to work each day. Until, out of the grey, they the job no longer exists and no-one comes to help. 

How many people routinely consider the state of the economy? Or properly understand it. Politicians often, and falsely, compare national economics to household budgeting. In reality there is no comparison – families can’t print money or determine wage-rates, governments can. And we live so far apart from those who govern us.

Other theorists create analogies between societal economies and the human body, yet again there is no comparison. A society has no heart, a stock exchange is a gambling casino not a liver, and a government is not a brain. The System is made and sustained by people living in an environment that sustains them, or doesn’t.

Society is comprised of millions of complex human organisms, co-operating or competing and at all times struggling to interpret and manage the sensations of the world around us. And at all times we are only semi-autonomous at best. 

We are wholly reliant upon each other, our social organisation, the collective whole, including Nature. Economists attempt to make some sense of this matrix of human interactions.

So does social psychology, recognising that all our behaviours influence the behaviour of all others. At the level of the individual, the emotion influences the intellect and the intellect the emotions. And all behaviour can be understood as the result of the interaction between intellect and emotion – at base, the dual-drive for identity and survival, as a person and as a group.

We struggle constantly with the challenge of valuing ourselves and others, and the interaction required to maintain our needs and feed our desires. Sufficiently loved, fed and housed we seek to conserve, hold on to what we’ve got, and so invest in the status quo. Change becomes a threat, comfort the bulwark to hide behind.

Human maturity can be defined as the growing acknowledgment of our own tendencies and triggers, and the effective management of both in order to function. To do so we have to be in touch with ourselves, to be honest about our faults and fears as well as our strengths and beauty. Some have labelled this as emotional intelligence.

Humans have a narcissistic capacity, especially so when encouraged in a society based upon individualism and competition. Some wallow in our own emotionality and see ourselves as the centre of our own universe, separating ourselves from others. This ego-centricity serves to not have to worry about how we’re seen by others, or how we behave towards them. 

Conversely, many espouse the dominance of the intellect and distinguish ourselves as having greater knowledge and understanding, feeling and behaving as superior to others and of being a member of an under-recognised elite. This ego-centricity imposes and seeks to dominate others.

Through both or either tendency we are alienated from others. We are also in a constant state of self-delusion. Little wonder. The illusion spun by the current individualist industry selling notions of emotional intelligence is their offer of “feelings’ as the panacea for a better life. “Listen to your gut instinct.” 

Experience will prove that the human can no more trust her or his emotions than we can trust our intellect. Knowledge changes over time, and emotions swell and dive minute by minute. A mature and independent approach is to check out our emotions through exercising knowledge, and check out our intellect by engaging our senses. Such an approach minimises complacency, for sure.

In so far as we are products of our history and environment (and we feel as well as know this to be probably true), our own behaviour is a reflection of society at large. The Capitalist System in which we all live portrays itself as rational, always seeking to be more efficient, demanding of us ever-better time-management, proscribed behaviour and objectivity over emotionality. 

In reality, Capitalism operates in exactly the opposite way – anarchic, reactive, unplanned and compulsive. It’s little wonder than many of us mirror the dysfunctional chaos of the System in our personal lives. 

Little wonder, also, that we are in a state of near-denial about the threat from global heating. For a start we have been corralled into living in our own tiny privatised worlds. And secondly we have hardly any say in our wider society. Those who have real influence over the economy – the global Capitalist class – are ploughing forward with the carbon economy and it’s emissions in complete denial of the very obvious sensations of global heating all around us.  

In response, we continue to seek employment by them to earn a wage in order to consume and derive a modicum of pleasure from life. The society in which we live appears oblivious to the coming catastrophe and therefore so do we. 

In our condition of assumed powerlessness, and despite all the scientific evidence and the nagging anxiety of an uncertain future, most choose to deny the peril of global heating.

It is self-evident, both emotionally and intellectually, that the longer we live in a condition of denial, the harder the crash when reality finally hits us. The global economy is slowing and many countries, including the UK, are sliding into a recession probably more painful than in 2008. In addition, the environment is weakening far faster than predicted, with food harvests declining rapidly due to extreme weather events, insect extinction and the changing climate. Drinkable water, the stuff of life, is already a luxury for billions of people. 

The responsibility for this is not equally shared. The global economy is run by, and has been created to benefit, a super-rich tiny elite who exert all-but total power-and-control over the vast majority of humanity. They manage us as their “subjects”, and pacify and infantilise us by distributing a heady mixture of fear and its antidote of opiates. The general complacency is the result of alienation, not choice.

Had the majority been empowered to create a society from scratch, few if any would have designed Capitalism. When we open our eyes, this dehumanised, environmentally destructive and emotionally distorting system of capitalist greed, private accumulation at the expense of others, alongside the wanton destruction of the natural world doesn’t feel right and makes no sense. 

It’s time to seek human maturity, to get back in touch with ourselves and manage our tendencies of complacency and narcissism. We must stop being economical with the Truth. We must get a grip of our emotions. We must demand true suffrage and self-determination. Crucially, if we are to prevent human extinction we have to understand the need for system change, and replace Capitalism. It’s time to come to our senses.

Sunday 8th September 2019

Carbon use has risen by 60% since 1990. This stands in sharp contrast to the majority view of climate scientists stating that we need to end global heating emissions and become carbon-neutral by 2025. How certain is this? In a recent interview with a right wing podcaster (Mallen Baker, a Corporate adviser to big business: https://Malle Baker.net/podcast), Roger Hallam of Extinction Rebellion explained he is influenced by complexity theory – a model suggesting that the construction of the future is complex and cannot be wholly predicted.

Indeed, we cannot say with a certainty that we are correct about climate change, and we don’t need to. The science is probe-able. We can do no more than delve deep into the gathered scientific facts in order to develop a probability analysis based upon current evidence. Compile the data. The context of probability offers human beings a collective assertion of emotional humility in which we don’t have to be certain to be potentially correct. There are no absolutes. 

The scientific facts detail that extinction within our lifetimes is a real possibility. Even if, as in the most conservative of estimates, only half a billion people die prematurely as a result of climate change within the next 50 years, the emotional impact upon those who remain will be socially destructive. 

The precautionary principle suggests we should act as if extinction is likely in order to stop it from happening. If the science says you’re likely to die, the debate is not over the probability but over the action required to lessen the potential. To do so, and in defiance of any scepticism, there will have to be a fundamental change in the way the System works and society manages itself, just in case.

This raises the probability of authoritarian state control in the coming period of deep crisis. How else, for example, will the majority of humans be convinced to give-up their private cars and the diesel-lorried goods filling-up supermarkets with seasonless nibbles? How do we end all notions of continuous growth and development? How do we consent to become carbon-neutral by 2025 – the probable date of no-return? 

Top-down governments have never been particularly sensitive to environmental concerns and will probably lead the descent into barbarism rather than prevent it. Absolute power in individual hands will determine who’s to live and who’s to die. Wealth and influence will dominate survival. Even Hallam admits that Right-wing politicians usually put the ideology of individualism in front of the facts.

The issue of consent is therefore important in this process of major social and economic change. How the majority of the People can be convinced remains the issue. Hallam is convinced that peers can convince their peers. So people like you convince people like you. Hence we need ordinary people randomly picked from across the political spectrum to share with those they know the understanding and information received from attendance at the Citizens Assemblies.

As an attempt to prevent totalitarianism the formulation by Extinction Rebellion of The Citizen’s Assembly process is highly appealing. It is a jury-style democratic decision-making process for deliberating on what is to be done. Lottery-picked jurors will be advised by specialists and expected to tell politicians what needs to be done. The replacement of one set of membership with a new set will ensure inclusion of our entire community.

There are no guarantees in life, suggests Hallam, but the historical record of such “deliberative democracy” offers the possibility of huge empowerment and radical solutions. It is suggested that the Jury system remains the most just method of calibrating degrees of doubt and proof. At the very least, Citizens Assemblies are a creative and inclusive solution. Probably.

Emotional Climate

06.09.2019

Global Heating, the recently revised term for what is happening to the Earth’s climate, is accelerating at an unpredicted rate. Not only had the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) failed to include acceleration in it’s 2018 forecast of a 1.5degree rise in global temperatures, but the best scientific modelling has proved to be decades out in its predictions of fires and floods.

This week alone we have seen three super-hurricanes form and develop at the same time, historically unheard of. Dorian caused storm surges, floods, widespread death and devastation across the Bahamas. At the very same time, uncontrollable fires blaze across all corners of the globe, not just the Amazon but the Arctic, Africa and Australia. 

Anyone watching must experience at least a passing surge of anxiety. Anyone directly involved will be experiencing trauma, with lasting effects. There is no peace from the recurring memory of a firefighter friend dying fighting a fire, a neighbour drowned in a building collapsing under water, a relative trapped in their car.

Now consider what it is for a child or young person perceiving these events. With the rest of their lives spanning a length difficult to perceive when young, the image of global heating excites a fear and despondency equitable to the feelings of youth in the late nineteen thirties or during the broadcasts at the time of the Bay of Pigs. 

We face a catastrophe. Many in the know suggest we face extinction. School students have taken strike action and will, once again, in 26 countries and over 1,000 cities worldwide on 20th September. This time the school refuser and environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, has called on adults for support. We can’t leave the future to the kids.

We can stop the coming Climate Catastrophe, but, as detailed by Extinction Rebellion rather than the IPCC, we have to go to a global war footing and diminish all use of carbon-based fuels towards zero emissions by 2025. This requires such a radical transformation of production and consumption that only mass mobilisations of millions of humans worldwide can ensure politicians and corporate bosses are forced to comply. 

The question of the hour shouts out; have the People the emotional resilience to take part and sustain system change? Will the repeated images of horror caused by human-made “Acts of Nature” become too awful to watch or too numerous to evoke any emotional response? Like civilians in a war zone, will we be rendered powerless? Like soldiers on a battlefield, will we become dehumanised and heartless?

There is a great need to speak the Truth about climate change. An essential ideological battle to be won, here and now, against The Deniers. But in so doing, the individual trauma faced by each of us as we perceive the coming catastrophe has to be openly acknowledged and managed.

We have to talk about global heating. We must feel we can do something, such as offering solidarity to the flooded of the Abaco Islands and those driven by flames in New South Wales. We must link arms to challenge the unnatural anti-human, anti-environment, anti-science nonsense of Trump and Bolsonaro.

We must challenge the Great Denial in all its forms. And to do all this we must acknowledge the emotional impact of our times, manage our inner pain, and offer solace and support to each other in this unprecedented tense and anxious emotional climate.

7.9.2019

Forced migration

The question is posed: how will the human world respond to the scale of forced migration caused by global heating. The rising of the seas is now inevitable, the seas already warming faster and higher than for millions of years past. Island nations and cities are already being swamped. 

Just as dramatically, migration raises emotional heat. There can be little doubt that Europe has become a fortress against those from the South seeking to escape drought, famine, war and all the ensuing poverty so produced. Symbolically at least, the White governments of the North are barricading their peoples against any possible Black insurgency.

The repeated images of drowned babies on Mediterranean beaches and imprisoned children torn from their parents grasp on the border between Mexico and the USA seer into some peoples conscience. At the same time, politicians explain away their barbarity by claiming to represent the selfishness of human nature or the primary protection of their own Nation. 

The emotional climate is an ideological battle ground. What children are taught in school, how parents explain the media images, what acceptable chat is apparent on the streets and in the playground, all congeal into the accepted truth and “common sense”. The current discourse purveys a sense of them-and-us if not dog-eat-dog. 

Thankfully, children who have not experienced the worst of early traumas develop with a strong sense of justice, fair play and feelings of what’s Right. Pubescent adolescents, their frontal lobes in a state of rewiring to cope with the rigours of independence, feel things most starkly. The human ability to empathise, a condition learnt and built upon rather than simply innate, is the kernel of all hope for the future.

The student strikes to demand action in this era of Climate Emergency are evidence of the most decent and progressive potential of human behaviour. Each young person has their own micro-motivation and at the same time share sensations of anger and outrage at the continued destruction of the environment and the impact upon human beings.

As with any emotion, anger can drive positive or negative behaviours. Anger is a survival-emotion first and foremost. In a racist atmosphere it can be turned against others, the outsiders, the threats. In a collective and inclusive environment it can be shared, arms-linked, to challenge the destructive status quo and force positive change.

The ideological battle comes from outside of ourselves. Are we encouraged to care for fellow humans or given palliatives that limit our expectations of what can be done and turn towards self-survival? Are we subject to the glib statements of silly old men (it is usually men) suggesting “it’s too late to do anything” and “you just have to let Nature take its course”, pushing innate hope into self-destructive despair? 

And to what extent does the current emotionally addictive zeitgeist of consumerism, individualistic and avaricious as it is, quash the gregarious norm of empathy? The struggle to prevent the coming climate catastrophe includes the struggle for decency over barbarism, inclusion over racism, social justice over competition, empathy over selfishness, and hope over despair. In short, the inner-strength to hold out your hand to others.

6th September 2019

Global Heating, the recently revised term for what is happening to the Earth’s climate, is accelerating at an unpredicted rate. Not only had the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) failed to include acceleration in it’s 2018 forecast of a 1.5degree rise in global temperatures, but the best scientific modelling has proved to be decades out in its predictions of fires and floods.

This week alone we have seen three super-hurricanes form and develop at the same time, historically unheard of. Dorian caused storm surges, floods, widespread death and devastation across the Bahamas. At the very same time, uncontrollable fires blaze across all corners of the globe, not just the Amazon but the Arctic, Africa and Australia. 

Anyone watching must experience at least a passing surge of anxiety. Anyone directly involved will be experiencing trauma, with lasting effects. There is no peace from the recurring memory of a firefighter friend dying fighting a fire, a neighbour drowned in a building collapsing under water, a relative trapped in their car.

Now consider what it is for a child or young person perceiving these events. With the rest of their lives spanning a length difficult to perceive when young, the image of global heating excites a fear and despondency equitable to the feelings of youth in the late nineteen thirties or during the broadcasts at the time of the Bay of Pigs. 

We face a catastrophe. Many in the know suggest we face extinction. School students have taken strike action and will, once again, in 26 countries and over 1,000 cities worldwide on 20th September. This time the school refuser and environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, has called on adults for support. We can’t leave the future to the kids.

We can stop the coming Climate Catastrophe, but, as detailed by Extinction Rebellion rather than the IPCC, we have to go to a global war footing and diminish all use of carbon-based fuels towards zero emissions by 2025. This requires such a radical transformation of production and consumption that only mass mobilisations of millions of humans worldwide can ensure politicians and corporate bosses are forced to comply. 

The question of the hour shouts out; have the People the emotional resilience to take part and sustain system change? Will the repeated images of horror caused by human-made “Acts of Nature” become too awful to watch or too numerous to evoke any emotional response? Like civilians in a war zone, will we be rendered powerless? Like soldiers on a battlefield, will we become dehumanised and heartless?

There is a great need to speak the Truth about climate change. An essential ideological battle to be won, here and now, against The Deniers. But in so doing, the individual trauma faced by each of us as we perceive the coming catastrophe has to be openly acknowledged and managed.

We have to talk about global heating. We must feel we can do something, such as offering solidarity to the flooded of the Abaco Islands and those driven by flames in New South Wales. We must link arms to challenge the unnatural anti-human, anti-environment, anti-science nonsense of Trump and Bolsonaro.

We must challenge the Great Denial in all its forms. And to do all this we must acknowledge the emotional impact of our times, manage our inner pain, and offer solace and support to each other in this unprecedented tense and anxious emotional climate.