*****
The industrial revolution “reorganised”
society – it shattered the idea of individual worth which had survived, to some
extent, the inherent inequality and belittling (of the everyday person – what would be blue collar or working class
today) evil of monarchy and Empire, and reduced individuals to cogs who
were concentrated and used until discarded.
In those days, the greatest need was for
physical survivability, and unions evolved in that context. They gave us the 8 hour
working day, they have been instrumental in safety regulations, and they became
well-organised at obtaining fairer pay.
They were needed, and they did their job,
probably right up until the mid- to late-20th Century.
I’ll come back to unions, but let’s now briefly
consider politics – in the specific sense of the functioning of Parliamentary
democracy. This goes back to the struggles between the elites and monarch in
the 1100s and 1200s (including the British
Magna Carta of 1215, and the Magna
Carta for the Kingdom of León in 1188), but wound up opening the door
for some access to decency of life for the people who had less power than the
elites – again, what would be blue collar or working class today.
Politics has evolved and developed, with a
halting, somewhat to-and-fro lurch towards better democracies. It has focused
on the physical organisation of society, up until the second half of the 20th
Century.
And the life of blue collar or working
class people has also changed since the mid-20th Century, moving
away from the subservience to national sovereignty and physical conditions of life
to a slow, cautious and sometimes reluctant embrace of the benefits of less
material aspects of life, the pursuit of human rights, and a quest for a sense
of meaning.
That quest for meaning did not, in my
opinion, arise from the erosion of formal, organised and old stilted forms of
religion, which had become focused on power and dogma millennia ago, but from the
fact that the quest for physical survival was no longer so predominant.
In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, once the
survival needs are met, people can move on to acknowledging and meeting other
needs, and that started with the rebelliousness of the 60s (which I reacted to with the disapproval of a child inclined towards
being a “square” – I have become far more radical as I have grown and seen and
experienced abuses).
(This
had also started in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but World War One put an
end to that.)
Politics responded to that fairly well, at
first, with the adoption of a broadening of the role of government that, to
some extent, had its modern origins in FDR’s New Deal of the 1930s. Even Unions
started to get in on the scene, with some activist strikes.
But then the elites struck back –
neoliberalism was born (initially called
economic rationalism here), and politics was wrenched back towards a focus
on material matters, mostly through a focus on budgets and money (the
so-called "fight against big government" swamped the fight against
corporations so ably expressed in the original Star Trey TV series of
the 60s). The
elites were well organised, and they had their toadies, and as a result working
and middle class people were befuddled and unaware, and thus bought in to the
premise that money mattered, and Unions were totally outmanoeuvred and also
fell back into a focus on the physical.
The world went from the hope and change of
the 60s to the “Greed is Good” evil of the 1980s – just two decades that saw
the everyday person set back to the psychological state of the 1800s and the
Industrial Revolution, where the pressure to survive cut back on time for
thinking and energy for activism. It was a state that led, ultimately, to the
widespread victories of neoliberalism, and the rise of the far right as the peoples
of the nations of the world drew fearfully in on themselves.
Against that, however, some people fought
back – just as some always have, whether they were religious mystics in deserts
and on mountains, human rights activists, politico-social progressives, or even
“just” people pursuing a sea change/tree change.
Nowadays the warriors of change for the better
are led by climate change activists, who are leading a fight to survival –
again, yes, but the most profound since the threats of the Cold War brought us
to the brink of a nuclear winter.
The Cold War was easier to win – due, in
large part, to things such as evils of business propaganda that Bernays
introduced, the vicious effectiveness of the elites and their toadies acting
through neoliberalism, and the distraction and intellectual . . . laziness(?)
of everyday people.
We have probably passed the point of no
return as far numbers of human on this planet is concerned - the environmental
consequences of climate change are too close to critical for the limited
numbers of people who have the requisite desperation to win (I may be wrong, of course).
This is not helped by the rise of
conservatism in politics, which has been aided historically by the continuing
focus of more progressive mainstream parties on material matters, dithering (the opportunity lost by the Federal ALP in
2007 for some form of carbon tax, in part undone by hard line position of the
Greens, was unforgiveable), by the errors of parties that were focused on environmental
matters in preaching to the choir, and by the fears and refusal to admit
changing circumstances of everyday people who voted conservatives in.
(There is also an obduracy of the bureaucracy that brought US President Obama undone, to some extent, and stops attempts to address problems such as the abuse of the punishment system - e.g., the psychological harm akin to being sexually assaulted of strip searches, which police refuse to even acknowledge.)
(There is also an obduracy of the bureaucracy that brought US President Obama undone, to some extent, and stops attempts to address problems such as the abuse of the punishment system - e.g., the psychological harm akin to being sexually assaulted of strip searches, which police refuse to even acknowledge.)
Those votes have, ultimately, been the
biggest problem – and activists have failed to do enough on that score, in my
opinion, and scientists and academics totally stuffed up their communication on
this from the 80s until about ten years ago (the
edited emails controversy did damage that is still lasting).
What hasn’t helped has been others buying
in to the premise of the neoliberals – from the unions focus on pay and safety
when broader thinking was required, to the greed of everyday Australians
starting to think houses were a source of wealth rather than a place to live
and the blindness and fear of politicians who cater to that rather than
allowing smaller (including “tiny” homes).
And that has not been aided by the media,
who have focused on the fleeting and sensational too often, at the expense of
broader analysis and commentary (that we’re
now getting with a number of outlets and journalists – to a depth and extent that
was missing in the crucial 90s and 2000s). Under the pressures of modern
life, pressures which should not exist, everyday people have needed the media
to do the role of broadening perspective to a greater extent than they have.
In my opinion, to quite an extent media
have set themselves up for the competition with social media by things such as tolerating / allowing
the tabloid trash to continue existing and publishing their gossip – areas of the media are now doing much
better (particularly the Conversation and
the Guardian Australia), but will it be enough to overcome the tabloid
trash’s power over everyday people?
People – voters – have also aided the
problems we’re now facing (I struggle to
understand how anyone could vote for Abbott). Political parties have
organisations and styles that are largely focused on their support base, and occasionally
delve into wider bases and lead to a win and maybe even a change of some sort,
but their internal structures have significant parts that are focused on the
quest for votes i.e., political power,
and that can make it hard for people who want to contribute to a change (it requires patience and [years of] persistence,
and good argument to convince those in policy rooms – and, from time to time, a
break).
There are, however, alternatives – such as
the participatory democracy in some parts of South America. Getting those up,
however, requires breadth of vision and depth of thought in the media, skill
from advocates that would enable overcoming of the psychological and emotional scars
that so many people have these days (which
is something I may publish an essay on shortly), and commitment to change
in politicians (which some have).
So where are we left?
I see many of the problems we face as gaps –
breaks in “visionariness” (as shown in
many unions in the late 20th Century), gaps between vision and
communication (not aided by the short
term focus and limited spread of effective ethics in the media), and a disconnect
between vision and ability to act (affecting
both political parties and everyday people who want simpler, lower impact lives).
Facing those gaps, and notwithstanding efforts
so far to overcome them, I consider that the best hope we have is for everyday
people to stop buying in to the premises of conventional society, including
that we should have convenience and “stuff”, and choose to live their
lives focused on material minimalism and non-material meaning.
Unfortunately, finding a way to survive
while doing that is not easy.
(PS - see here - some interesting comments about setbacks in the late 70s)
(PS - see here - some interesting comments about setbacks in the late 70s)
