Aditya Chakrabortty has written a profound and compelling article for the Guardian today. It's headlines say:
Loneliness is an inevitable result of Britain's economic model
The health secretary wants adults to look after their elderly parents to combat loneliness, as Asian people do. But Jeremy Hunt is wrong on who loneliness affects, wrong on what causes it, and wrong on what's happening in Asia
Aditya is right: as he says:
The flipside of economic individualism is loneliness. And as that model has been exported around the world, even traditionally family-centred cultures have started to crumble.
Everywhere that seems to be true. We live in the era of the economics of the self and yet so many crave for the economics of the warm and friendly hug that this world seems so intent on denying them.
That's the economics that recognises a person's worth, and not their cost.
And which values their contribution, and not the burden they impose.
It's the thinking that says each person has potential and we have to seek to help them fulfil it, and not consign them to a minimum wage paid by an agency that only seeks to exploit them.
Most of all, it's the economics that says we live, work, socialise and ultimately survive in community, and not alone.
It's very far from neoliberalism. That's an economics built on contempt for all others. The world needs economics built on care for others.
It's as profound as that.
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We all have a choice. A choice to support family and be part of that. Or to go to the city and work hard, very hard, and sometimes too hard.
That is so callously indifferent to reality that I am staggered I have allowed that comment
Most people have no such choice
Are you really so unaware?
Everyone has a choice. Don’t be naive.
Don’t think that all the bankers in London are well educated people, who come from Posh Surrey. Many are from the East London, many from broken homes, many who didn’t do well at school.
Look into the subject.
I know this all too well
And your suggestion that everyone has choice is insulting because it is so wrong
Candidly, only someone blindly indifferent to reality could suggest that
Which is why your days on this blog are over
jason- what makes you think people in the City work ‘harder’ than others? You’ve fallen victim to a great myth!
Agree with that – they do drink and spend/waste money harder than most of us though.
Another myth is that all city workers are well paid. Yes there are some that are paid ridiculous amounts of money, but many of the people who work in the city are just doing ‘normal’ jobs and getting by like the rest of us.
“Ironically, for many older South Asians living in the West, this is becoming the norm. Younger generations of South Asians living in the West have also embraced Western values and it is becoming more and more acceptable to send elders to old people’s homes. These same young South Asians are inheriting for free the properties and fortunes of their elders, who worked hard during their younger years only to end up in old people’s homes. It is the sad truth”
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/uk-looks-to-india-to-manage-national-shame-of-elderly-care-434122?curl=1382426064
This has needed to be said for too long and dare I say that this sounds like the narrative that we’ve been waiting for. The unlocking question is “how do we want to live in our old age?” – because it starts with us, right now. If we (or I at 46) want to not be living in loneliness then we need to start to change the culture now.
What we need is a culture that values what people do with their lives rather than what they have. Cameron and others talk about the Aspiration Nation, but you know in your heart that what they mean is what people aspire to materially HAVE, not what they aspire to DO.
We need a country full of people who have been encouraged to follow their passions, what deep inside of them they know they were made for. There is nothing like seeing someone who has come alive through what they DO. What they then HAVE in terms of material stuff becomes of secondary importance or of no importance. Seeing people fully alive spills over into their friends, families and neighbourhoods. And I dare to say that if the focus is shifted from an individual’s materiality to a community’s well-being, the economy will naturally take care of itself. That’s a bold statement, and one that will take a generation to work through, but it is what I believe we need.
I agree with you
@Richard M re Richard’s moving post. I too very strongly support, and agree with, what Richard says. Alas, Jason’s contributions, to which you -I think justifiably – objected struck me as being an example of what might be called a ‘Pavlovian response’ to life: our hegemonic masters ring the bell, and we drones dutifully react, enriching them (the masters) at our cost.
Jason is right, though, in one sense: we DO have a choice, not, however, the one he outlines, but that of ignoring and opposing our ‘masters’ – who are, alas, true cynics, in knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing – and opting instead to struggle and work for the sort of society you two Richards, and very many others, would like to see = a soicety of REAL interdependence, where mutuality and co-operation keep essential competition (and it IS essential_ in its proper place as servant, and NOT master. To paraphrase Jesus – the economy was made for people, not people for the economy.
Very true
Me too.
Indeed -people need to talk together, sing together and do things that involve no material reward other than the satisfaction of a mutuality in relationship. This Government is the opposite of real ambition, in fact, it’s view of the human and human potential is as low on the evolutionary ladder as you can get! over the last few decades I’ve witnessed our whole culture descend into appalling crass vulgarity. I think the playwright Howard brenton referred to the Thatcher years as a ‘hurricane of philistinism’, now we seem to be approaching the heart of its maelstrom!
It’s been a fundamental contradiction in conservative ideology for a very long time: the very capitalist system that they worship destroys the ways of life that they would have conserved. This is why the ‘fall of man’ narrative is always so appealing to conservatives – bad people do bad things because they’re bad (i.e. for no rational reason) and the only solution to their evil and fecklessness is admonishment and discipline. There’s no social or political prelude to bad people doing bad things, there’s no causality. There’s just a rot, a pox that’s somehow ‘in their bones’ and needs to be beaten out of them. (See the response to the London riots, for example.)
The whole ideology is really one big exercise in having their cake and eating it too – fueling a system that is fundamentally socially transformational and expecting the same old ‘family values’ to persevere unchanged. It’s as violent as it is irrational.
Well!
I have a 42″ plasma tv, given to me by my son.
Yes, I have a tv licence: No, I don’t sit in front of it very often. A few hours a week at most.
In fact, most of the time I use it, I watch films from the DVD player (another freebie).
I never watch commercial tv, I loath adverts.
I am investigating the possibility of dumping the tv licence, even though it leads to problems from the capita gestapo.
The time to “let go” of life will be signalled by a desire to watch eastenders/corrie etc, on catchup as well….
JohnM -I’m looking into ditching the licence if i can as 75% of it goes to the BBC which I now see as a portal of neo-liberal ideology and atrociously dumbed down inquiry. I don’t see why we should pay the ridiculous salaries of this organisation’s chiefs and contribute to their immense pay-offs and private health care plans. have you looked into the legality of it?
Yes.
Watching broadcast television without a licence is illegal. The fines are high, and if you need a DBS certificate to work you will be waving goodbye to employment.
But.
You do NOT need a licence to watch TV on the internet as long as it is not being streamed at the same time as it is being broadcast.
The problem arrives in the other gear, such as sat/dvd gear which also contains a broadcast receiver.
A computer/monitor combination is ok, and monitors are available in large sizes (and the NOWTV box means you can have films available as well….but I’ll have to chack about, again, broadcast tv over that box)
It should be ok for me to use my large tv since it only has an analogue receiver built-in !
But. Beware the capita gestapo!
We are social beings. We live off affection from others. The societies that often work best and are more harmonious are the ones that work together collectively for the common good.
There has been little harmony but plenty social decay and social breakdown in the neoliberalism of the past thirty years.
That tells you all you need to know of the consequences of unrestrained capitalism.
Adam Smith said ” It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”. That does not mean that actions of the butcher etc are not built on care for others. He cares about others because society is reciprocal. That does not necessarily demean the act of the butcher. A world in which we relied too much on pure benevolence would probably result in worse meat, beer and bread than one which recognises that self interest is a motivating force for good when put within the context of an exchange economy. An economic system which results in us helping people we don’t actually care about, or even hate, is extremely beneficial to all of us, and increases harmony between different peoples.
I heard someone commenting on radio about how it is the responsibility of children to ensure that elderly relatives are chatted to when in care. He said that care staff are too busy to do this. Well, for a start, not every old person has a family. Secondly – most importantly – surely it should be statutory to employ people in such homes to engage with those who do not have regular visits. It really is part of all types of care that there is sufficient human contact.
I agree – and it’s not just care homes but also nurses. Nursing was made over into a “profession” and some younger nurses who had to get a degree to get their job now seem to see themselves as above the unglamorous, caring element of their job and more akin to a doctor. We don’t need a second “almost-doctor” profession, we need people who will administer care and support to vulnerable patients, even if that does mean doing unglamorous (and at times disgusting) work.
Clearly Hunt is being tendentious and disingenuous (par for the course) in his condescending and sentimentalised view of Asiatic culture. In Japan, many of the issues are similar to here and also in China where neo-lib mania is fragmenting human relationships. All cultures are becoming ‘time-poor’.