I have a question.
Aug. 19th, 2014 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerConsider the world for a moment. Not the planet, not the ecosystem; I'm talking about the human world as a whole, politics, economics, industry, technology, culture, art, all our societies moving forward into the future one day at a time.
How do you want to see it?
Do you want to see it as a confluence of vast impersonal forces, market forces, technological progress, social evolution, all rushing headlong from places we never knew toward goals we can't imagine, with us human flotsam just caught up in the currents and trying vainly to keep ourselves upright and afloat?
Or do you want to see the human world as composed of human beings, each one of us possessed of a degree of agency in our own sphere, in aggregate capable of determining our destiny and shaping the world the way we want it?
I can see the attraction of the first view. There's something exciting about being on a roller coaster, especially with no safety rails, or being caught up in white water and swept along. It gives people something they can secretly worship, a power bigger than themselves but influencing their lives just the way people used to think gods did. And, of course, it neatly exonerates anyone of personal responsibility for things that happen. You can't stand in the way of progress. Global economic forces are unstoppable. One must grow or die. The weak go to the wall. Nothing personal, it's just business.
But I have a sneaking fondness for the second view. The one that says there are no market forces, there is no tide of progress, those are just metaphors we made up and then put on an altar. What there is is us. We do things, or by inaction allow them to be done. CEOs of companies make choices which result in job losses and call it market forces. Politicians take kickbacks from lobbyists and then stand up and say there was nothing they could do, it was just economic progress. Fifty-two per cent of people don't bother to vote and say it's all just politics, what can you do. Metaphors. Weasel words. Excuses. We don't have time for that any more.
Given enough of us who know what's happening and agree, we can bend the market forces to our will. We can stop the Progress Bus before it goes over the cliff. It's not the tide. It's not a force of nature. It's nothing but us. The human world is us. If we're going to be a global economy, we have to act like one, globally. If jobs are being outsourced to other countries because the labour is cheaper there, then something global needs to be done about that so everyone in both countries can either have jobs, or live without them. Rich economies want their businesses to pay less for labour in poor economies, then the rich economies must support their citizens without demanding that they work for it. That's what the Universal Basic Income is really about, and it says something for human agency in the human world that anyone is even considering it.
We cannot allow ourselves to be ruled by metaphors. We're people. We are what's really here.
If we don't start acting like it, we're going to die.
How do you want to see it?
Do you want to see it as a confluence of vast impersonal forces, market forces, technological progress, social evolution, all rushing headlong from places we never knew toward goals we can't imagine, with us human flotsam just caught up in the currents and trying vainly to keep ourselves upright and afloat?
Or do you want to see the human world as composed of human beings, each one of us possessed of a degree of agency in our own sphere, in aggregate capable of determining our destiny and shaping the world the way we want it?
I can see the attraction of the first view. There's something exciting about being on a roller coaster, especially with no safety rails, or being caught up in white water and swept along. It gives people something they can secretly worship, a power bigger than themselves but influencing their lives just the way people used to think gods did. And, of course, it neatly exonerates anyone of personal responsibility for things that happen. You can't stand in the way of progress. Global economic forces are unstoppable. One must grow or die. The weak go to the wall. Nothing personal, it's just business.
But I have a sneaking fondness for the second view. The one that says there are no market forces, there is no tide of progress, those are just metaphors we made up and then put on an altar. What there is is us. We do things, or by inaction allow them to be done. CEOs of companies make choices which result in job losses and call it market forces. Politicians take kickbacks from lobbyists and then stand up and say there was nothing they could do, it was just economic progress. Fifty-two per cent of people don't bother to vote and say it's all just politics, what can you do. Metaphors. Weasel words. Excuses. We don't have time for that any more.
Given enough of us who know what's happening and agree, we can bend the market forces to our will. We can stop the Progress Bus before it goes over the cliff. It's not the tide. It's not a force of nature. It's nothing but us. The human world is us. If we're going to be a global economy, we have to act like one, globally. If jobs are being outsourced to other countries because the labour is cheaper there, then something global needs to be done about that so everyone in both countries can either have jobs, or live without them. Rich economies want their businesses to pay less for labour in poor economies, then the rich economies must support their citizens without demanding that they work for it. That's what the Universal Basic Income is really about, and it says something for human agency in the human world that anyone is even considering it.
We cannot allow ourselves to be ruled by metaphors. We're people. We are what's really here.
If we don't start acting like it, we're going to die.