“to be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than
despair convincing”
Now the FIGURE of our entanglement is our interdependence
with each other, our environment, our culture, our digital and other
technologies, our social civility (accepting the rules and conditions physical
distancing) – The Ground is now a type of uncertainty – a questioning or challenging of autonomy,
independence, self-created agency &
the revelation of a necessity of true social justice of care & compassion.
Covid-19 has revealed what every fan of zombie movies has learned. That when one person is infected – we are all at risk. That not only is survival a group effort – but the reason we want to survive is for social existence.
All this is fine – but there is question – one that is
nurtured by a long past, and most especially the pseudo-science of neo-liberal
economics with its ‘math-magical equations’ that challenges every initiative of
evolving and improving our social supports – our social safety net of our
interdependence – that question is – How are we going to pay for it???
That question distracts us from the underlying moral
framework – the framework of how we value our values that has become the ground
of this neo-liberal economic reasoning.
For too long the hangover of ‘the gold standard’ has shaped
our reasoning about the question of where does money come from – it has to come
from somewhere?
For over 50 years – the only ground of our currency has been
only well understood by the high priests of the economic paradigm of finance. But
even Milton Friedman – said in public to Paul Rian – the government can never
run out of money – Why because the government can issue currency into the
economy by going to the right computer and keying in the requisite amount of
numbers into the desired account.
That’s it. There is no pot-of-gold that government must
hoard for a rainy day.
Anyone interested in an accurate description of where
money/currency comes from – please Google Modern Monetary Theory.
It’s not magical thinking – it doesn’t solve all our
problems – it still requires rigor in accounting for what we value, and how we
value our values.
By understanding where money comes from – we reveal the
false ground of a narrative that a government’s taxes are the source of its
capacity to spend and invest. But taxes are not ‘how we pay for ‘that’. Taxes serve
other policy purposes – primarily to create a ‘good enough’ level playing field
– to distribute power and opportunity.
Just as a feudal hierarchy (still alive in most work contexts) is
incompatible with a society seeking to embody democracy – so monopolies,
platforms and levels of toxic inequality and injustice are incompatible with
market economies.
Capitalism is NOT the market system that Adam Smith
articulated in the wealth of nations.
One of the real barriers to understanding the power of a government
to issue currency is another aspect of the invisible ground of neo-liberal
magical thinking. And that is a moral framework – one that George Lakoff among
others have well articulated.
Success in the neo-liberal free market – and strict father
patriarchy narrative - is a judgement that success arises because of one’s
discipline – one’s success is a measure of one’s self-discipline – lack of
success is a sure indication of a lack in the quality of self-discipline. This
moral framework entails that helping those who aren’t judged successful by
‘market results’ is actually an immoral act – by preventing the development of
necessary self-discipline.
This is the same moral framework that determines that
profits are a measure of the value an individual has ‘earned’ by enacting their
discipline. In this way Billionaires are rich because their wealth is a measure
their discipline and ‘individually’ earned value – The same holds for the
compensation packages of cadres of managers, CEOs etc.
But covid-19 reveals the ground of our wealth is actually
earned by the value created by our ‘essential heroes’ and the public capacity
for building infrastructure and widely shared knowledge.
The moral framework of neo-liberal economics, deems social
safety nets as a coddling of the poor that prevents them from developing the
necessary individual discipline for market success of the isolated, atomistic,
selfish individual.
McLuhan might have considered that Covid-19 has performed as
an artist by enacting an anti-environment to the previous ‘ground-environment’
of our sense of individual self-determination. This new ‘anti-environment’ enables a better focus
on the more accurate figure of the social conditions and foundations of any
sense of selfhood.
Our entanglement in the emerging digital environment is
conditioning us for an unknowable future. How can we breath the awareness
necessary to enact this conditioning as a path to flourishing choices of both
liberty and care/love for others – in short can we enact a new moral framework
of how we value our values – Can we enact with response-ability to create and
sustain institutions of full-spectrum justice – social, economic, political and
more?
The artist that is covid-19 is challenging us all with the
Zen Koan of enacting physical distancing while reframing our social fabric – in
a declaration of our interdependence.
0 comments:
Post a Comment