“The more we’re thrown into conflict with each other through engineered distrust, the less able we are to unite against those responsible.” DaShanne Stokes
It has been less than a week since my last post and yet the whole world seems to have gone insane with fear from the Coronavirus. As with anything else in our global society, the chaos and ripple effects of whole countries shutting down is having a major effect on how people now think about our consumer paradigm. If one look beyond the real health problems and elevated concerns of how this virus is affecting people all around the world, and look at the bigger picture, something else is seen to be occurring.
People are being furloughed (or told to stay home – many without pay) in droves with the likely hood of no income to shore up their meagre savings (if any). Small businesses, café, restaurants, and bars where people tend to hang out are shut down or limited to take-out menus only. Scared people are panic buying at all grocery stores as though the apocalypse is coming. The news and others news feeds are saying very little about the financial consequences on local economy where the common person lives during this panic. Meanwhile, governments all around the world talk about massive bail-outs and increased subsidies for major corporations and banking institutions (in the U.S. it is being proposed to spend as much as 1.5 trillion dollars). This is tax-payer money being used when the tax-payers are not earning money because of the lock-downs that are occurring. Should these bailouts occur, like they did in 2008, governmental spending short-falls will be noticed immediately with politicians telling everyone that they need to make major cuts in public spending to stave off a global economic crisis. While the fat cats stay financially fine, the rest of the people get shafted. Many of the furloughed people will likely find their jobs no longer there once the ‘crisis’ is over. As a recession builds, fewer employed people mean less money being spent, causing even more lay-offs, thereby deepening the recession. The social safety nets (enacted in many countries after the Great Depression started by the 1929 stock market crash) will be removed by governments under the guise of trying to save the global economy. This scenario is not just my invention to try and scare you further, but part of an economic discipline called Disaster Capitalism.
Not the only voice about this, Naomi Kline has written extensively about the abuses perpetrated by politicians using disaster capitalism to ram home extraordinary policies that further the goals of neoliberals and corporations while hurting the common people. Kline calls this set of actions ‘Shock Doctrine.’ This doctrine has been a silent partner to the imposition of neoliberalism for more than 40 years. {This doctrine] follows a clear pattern: wait for a crisis (or even, in some instances, as in Chile or Russia, help foment one), declare a moment of what is sometimes called “extraordinary politics”, suspend some or all democratic norms – and then ram the corporate wish-list through as quickly as possible. The research showed that virtually any tumultuous situation, if framed with sufficient hysteria by political leaders, could serve this softening-up function. It could be an event as radical as a military coup, but the economic shock of a market or budget crisis would also do the trick. Amid hyperinflation or a banking collapse, for instance, the country’s governing elites were frequently able to sell a panicked population on the necessity for attacks on social protections, or enormous bailouts to prop up the financial private sector – because the alternative, they claimed, was outright economic apocalypse.”
It will be interesting if within the next few weeks, we find my speculative narrative in the second paragraph start taking on a real and tangible position. If not the coronavirus this time, it will be some other immediate crisis. My feeling is that by July of this year we shall be seeing signs of draconian policy changes in which we accept our freedoms being eroded rapidly in the guise of protecting us from some mythical catastrophe. We are at a major cross roads. My friends have heard me refer to this coming chaos as the time of changes. While change is, and can be, scary for many, it also signifies a time of growth. On one side of the razors edge is the authoritarian hierarchy promising salvation but leading us to a neo-feudalism. On the other side is a quiet transformation characterized by the masses making a choice towards a sustainable world. Not the overthrow of the old paradigm, but simply people finally saying, “Enough is enough. Let’s try something together instead of waiting for action from the existing hierarchy that has ignored us for too long.”
What will it take to get a critical mass of people to be innovators and early adopters of a paradigm for sustainability (see prior post Adopting a new way of thinking and living – Adopter Theory). The good news is that we are already started on the way through this shift, but the crucial balance lies in large numbers of people everywhere making the choice. The best information is on the fringes of the mass media. Journalists who currently promote the consumer lifestyle with its Narrative of Perpetual Progress need the courage to report what they really see and not what the media ‘Gatekeepers’ tell them to report. I know several journalists and they all claim to want to report the truth, but when I give them a skeptical look, admit that it’s a nice goal, but they have to keep a job to pay the bills. Over 90% of the worlds mass media (that includes most entertainment channels) are owned by just five corporations – Viacom, News Corp, AOL/TW, Clear Channel, and Disney, with big players like GE, AT&T, Time Warner, and CBS being partially share owned within the big five. Corporations and their political lackies would like us to continue in the illusion. The big five want you to continue to believe in the consumer paradigm as that is how they control you and make money. It is up to us, the people, to encourage journalists and academics to practice integrity and use their responsibility to talk about the real truth. These independent knowledge brokers have a role in connecting the dots and showing us that supposedly isolated events and phenomenon tie directly to wider economic, social and political forces of the hierarchical powers.
If you are waiting for some new authority to tell you what to do, you may wait a long time. It is up to us to voice our concerns and to speak to others. Not to spread new propaganda, but to generate discourse and dialogue that opens up new ideas and innovations that support growth not stagnation and anxiety. While I may have several concerns about social media, the one thing it can currently do is open up the channels for us to communicate. It is our job to be informed of what is happening and not to be distracted by the arena of entertainment. Rome collapsed while the Roman citizenry were kept busy with the bloody spectacles in the colosseum and other arenas throughout that empire. According to Eric Hoffer, Mass movements are often created by charismatic individuals. Hoffer states that three personality types typically lead mass movements: “men of words”, “fanatics”, and “practical men of action”, but we can create a mass movement of people for sustainability through community action. Just think about the social actions of the 1960s. They might have had their passionate spokes people, but it was the common folk who really led those movements to achieve the successes they did. Rosa Parks and Rachel Carson may have triggered the responses, but people made the changes happen. We are the ones we are waiting for! So, what are we trying to transform into? Read my next Blog post for one possible vision.
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