The PM feels very naked this morning; metaphorically of course.
But so too does Brexit.
And the Conservative Party.
Davos Man is beginning to shiver.
Whilst his friend at the President's Club is, well, exposed.
The wrapping has, meanwhile, fallen off neoliberalism, making it clear it is only about increasing division.
That's what it feels like. And everyone is beginning to say it.
Some will be in furious Humpty Dumpty mode: trying to push it all back on the wall again.
But the truth is neoliberalism has gone too far. It is irreparably damaged. The rot has set in. The only question is ‘how long?'
Apart, that is, from the bigger, and more worrying one, which is ‘what next?'
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I do hope so but I had similar feelings in 2008 and things have only got worse since. I’m sure governments around the world will be ready to dig deep into taxpayers’ pockets to keep the corrupt show on the road a bit longer.
We aren’t going to design a new society. It’s too complicated. So, let’s simply list what we’d like to see… (didn’t we just recently do this though?) and take things one step at a time.
Fair enough
Still take’s a big vision though
A Courageous State, anyone?
Bill Kruse says:
January 30 2018 at 7:33 am
“We aren’t going to design a new society….”
No, but we’ll get a ‘new’ society of some sort by default.
Whether we like it any better remains to be seen. It will depend of course to some extent on what we are offered and what we are prepared to put with.
The tiniest incremental improvement is better than nothing. As long as we keep electing crooks and imbeciles into office we get what we deserve, because they don’t use the powers at their disposal in our collective interests.
‘What next?’
I think we have been living in an age of hyper-existentialism – where individual self realisation has been put before other concerns (such as morality and obligations to others). The top 1% are definitely self realised whilst the rest of us use the market to buy the car or the clothes or holidays that expresses our individuality (we consume our way to self-realisation). Neo-liberalism has been an enabler of this in my view and has increased division in society as a result. Self realisation before solidarity with others.
I came to the conclusion that existentialism as a philosophy is in crisis and may have actually caused a wider human crisis whilst watching von Tryer’s film ‘Nymphomaniac’ where the central character goes to extreme lengths to be what she thinks she is. The results of the character’s journey can only be described as catastrophic in my view – for her and those around her. I liken her journey to our own in contemporary capitalism – looking at how we treat people so badly, in how we throw them away so cheaply, create chaos and how we degrade our planet and eventually ourselves.
I have been reading about this chap Jordan Peterson – (his latest book ’12 Rules for Life’). Peterson is a controversial and complex figure but in being so is worth in my opinion engaging with because unlike a lot of other controversialists he seems less rigid in his beliefs and more open. Sure – he seems to have a big downer on Marxism and he is also religious.
But he also thinks that western individualism (existentialism?) is one of the biggest gifts to the world. And even he seems to sense that it has gone too far and it is now lacking morality for one thing. Peterson points to the Bible as a place in which we should relearn morality – not a bad place to start. As a child we read stories from the Bible to learn about good and bad behaviour.
Neo-liberalism and market evangelism has in my view reduced too many of us to the level of children so maybe he is right to direct us to the Bible once more. And Peterson is absolutely clear that it individuals who must have the personal commitment to morality – it must be owned by them. What von Hayek might have said of this is very interesting!
But Peterson is important because he is associated with the alt-right and I know alt right folk who listen to him. So what I’m saying is that we may have a sign of a moderating force (or forces) on the Right too which may signify ‘What next’. I live in hope that I am right.
But the other thing to remember is this.
There are people out there in the 1% who still do not get it because this world has worked for them in a big way and continues to do so. And whilst we sit here talking (and doing – as you do Richard) about change and a better world, they are still here doing what they do regardless. Because they just can’t help it.
So we must try to change but remember that we are dealing with some who are unchangeable. This lot need isolating and controlling and the best way to do that is through democracy and joined up thinking across national barriers.
Sorry that I may have written badly on some deep subjects here but I have to go to work now!
I know that feeling
I hope I’m replying to the appropriate bit but I call this human response to neoliberalism as the L’Oriale Effect – probably spelt that incorrectly – or in English – Cos I’m Worth It. A whole generation who grew up under Thatcher think they have entitlement without responsibility.
Rude awakening time coming
Hi Pilgrim
I had dismissed Jordan Peterson as the people whom have mentioned him as a guru tend to be very unsavory alt-right types. He has also been described by someone whom I respect as the “idiots thinking man.” Am I being premature in my assessment?
Sean
Hmmm……….All I would say is that I am coming from a perspective of unfamiliarity with his work so it is too early for me to tell. There are already some of his ideas I do not like that I would like to debate with him already but the rest I need to engage with properly. And that is what I intend to do rather than recoil. We may learn something.
My advice is to answer your own question Sean. Engage directly and not through others.
I asked a question on this blog not so long ago about why it had to be the Left who had to reform contemporary capitalism. Why could the Right not do it?
If Peterson is trying to inject a better morality into conservative /neo-liberal / libertarian/individualistic thinking then I don’t care where it comes from as long as we see a change for the better. Peterson seems to be talking rebalancing individualism as the limits of it may have been reached in terms of growing inequality and a planet in danger.
Change that comes from within a philosophical movement might be more useful than that which is imposed upon it. And all I am trying to do is contribute to answering that question – What next? – if and when neo-liberalism falls. Maybe Peterson is trying to do the same.
To continue Pilgrim’s analogy of a film with current socio-economic issues, I recently watched Terry Gilliam’s dystopian view of the future as viewed in his 1985 movie “Brazil” and was left with the thought that, with the passage of time, his fantastically imaginative vision of the future seemed increasingly like a documentary!
PSR-some very interesting and complex points there (not bad between breakfast and setting of for your day job!).
With regard to to the Right overlapping with the Left -this has been a characteristic of recent years where both voice opposition to the financial system and corporate power. I’m not sure why ‘existentialism’ is connected with hyper-individualism, though. Sartre’s phrase ‘existence comes before essence’ was a sort of call to engage with reality and ditch abstractions as well as raising the reality of choice in shaping the world.
I don’t know about Peterson as I haven’t read him (I immediately thought of the Peterson Foundation!) but I’m wary of referring to the Bible as moral guide without being very careful indeed. The Bible requires a lot of sophistication in how to interpret it and anyone who applies it without that scholarship could be misusing it for unspecified political purposes.
Peterson dismisses Marxism you say -yet Marx was massively concerned about how the individual could enrich her/himself and saw capitalism doing the opposite -reducing people to wage slavery with no possibility of self-realisation.
I would guess that Peterson is a libertarian and libertarians share with the Left the hatred of the ‘rentier’. Although I see myself as on the radical Left, I’m often sympathetic to some libertarian thinking although I have doubts about the vision of a self-balancing non-corporate capitalism almost reminiscent of a neighbourly small-town America prior to large scale industrialisation. AT this point we need to State to reclaim social purpose.
Simon,
The thing that those folk usually hate about Marx is his determinist ideas. They see them as being is as anthema to their idea of great individuals freely choosing great destinies etc. etc.
Pilgrim,
Jordan Peterson sounds from your description like a man spouting claptrap, but even if I disagree with his conclusions it sounds like something which is thought provoking, and presumably he’s thought about what he’s writing.
Seems like a valid exercise. I’ll look out for a copy. I’m somebody who finds Erich von Daniken interesting. He doesn’t offer a lot of answers that make sense to me, but he does raise interesting questions.
So many blogs are full of proposals for a better, fairer society. But I’ve yet to read one, or a book, which tells us how we get there and overturn the existing structure.
Try The Courageous State
I have, and I thoroughly endorse it.
Thanks
I particularly like the simile used about this government at the moment in the current ‘Stumbling and Mumbling’ blog;
” drowning men fighting for a brick “
Very good
Sean
Did you see this at all?
https://life.spectator.co.uk/2017/09/jordan-peterson-and-the-transgender-wars/
Well worth a read if only to give Peterson a decent chance.
That’s an interesting article-thanks PSR. This struck me powerfully:
‘This ignorance, he believes, as a Jungian, is a real and present danger, since he considers that the Shadow (the dark part of oneself that has to be recognised and incorporated in order to produce a mature human being) needs to be acknowledged if it is not going to wreak havoc – and totalitarian pathology disguises its malevolence with declared good intentions.
‘We are all monsters and if you don’t know that, then you are in danger of becoming the very monster that you deny,’ he says.’
He might be a little too focused on the dark side! But as a Quaker I would say that seeing the dark side is vital, it’s vital to see the little petty scheming, self-obsessed thoughts, manipulations that we, as humans, come up with. A world which forces upon us ‘positive thinking’ all the time and obliges us to appear happy with skin tight grins in the end creates the opposite.
He seems to focus on the Left without addressing the hubris of corporate totalitarianism and global capitalism -which is a shame.
Simon
All I’m saying about Peterson is that he I asking questions about morality from the point of individualism in a time when individualism has been turbo charged by neo-liberal and market culture. Peterson seems to be trying to reconnect the individual to others – to the masses – to society through a greater individual inner awareness of what is going on around them – Tory politicians please note!!
Prima facie this is a good thing.
And by the way, he is an academic – erudite and well read and much published. Yes – I see him as having it in for Marxism and the Left. I don’t agree with all he says and he makes feel uncomfortable.
But that is why I am drawn to him. I am repulsed by false intellectuals like Michael Gove and Buchanan – but Peterson is a much more serious proposition because he even though he is religious he is an odd mixture of nomothetic (able to make big generalisations about issues and use these as universal truths) as well ideographic (able to look at things on an individual, unique context). He does not seem rooted deeply in anything really and I think that this gives him interesting insights.
And yes – I agree that the State must reclaim its social purpose. But what Peterson might remind us is that the State is made up of lots of different individuals – working together to make that happen.
I try not to dismiss opinion
Of what I have seen of him his opinions seem to be a long way from my own
The recognition of the dark side is fundamental to many “national” psyches. It shows up in the Portuguese and Brazilian cultures, where the belief is that you can’t understand true happiness without experiencing and understanding sadness. It’s perhaps best exemplified in the music of fado, samba and choro, where many melodies are heart-achingly sad and many of the most joyous pieces are set in minor keys. The same is true of the Celtic nations, particularly Scotland and Ireland, where, again, it shows up strongly in the music.
And it’s true
But then, I am a Celt
I agree PSR, Peterson has some interesting insights mixed in but he comes out with appalling corkers such as ‘the Left don’t really care about the poor they only hate the rich’, which is just another variation of the ‘politics of envy cliche’ and manifestly untrue.
What worries me is that that he is getting a lot of hits and is already a bit of a guru for the Right and that leads to the sort of group think that he supposedly inveighs against.
Interesting, Pilgrim Thanks.
Relates very directly to a local discussion thread on the ‘problem of single mothers’ which is as you might expect turning up the usual clichés and ‘whataboutism’. The suggestion that maybe this a symptom of the real problem of too many unmarried fathers is met with predictable derision.
I absolutely identify with his comment about speech (expressing thoughts out loud) as being integral to the very process of thought. For me writing is part of that process and because it leaves a tangible trail enables a more thorough possibility of review, both immediately and for later consideration.
I’m particularly curious about his observations on transgender issues because that’s a whole area of human experience I just don’t ‘get’. Until I can recognise that I exist somewhere on that confused transgender spectrum I can’t get my head round it at all. For example it wasn’t until I recognised that my smoking had close parallels with classic self-harming behaviour (cutting and burning etc.) that it made any sense to me at all.
Suddenly Jordan Peterson is on my must read list.
The Guardian has done a digested read of Jordan Peterson’s new book https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/28/12-rules-for-life-an-antidote-to-chaos-by-jordan-b-peterson-digested-read. John Crace makes it as empty as it sounds. Maclean’s, a Canadian current affairs magazine, has a view of Peterson to contrast with that of his alt-right fans http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/is-jordan-peterson-the-stupid-mans-smart-person/.
Crace is good
Ok – but my plea is let’s not engage with Peterson in a second hand fashion.
Let us engage with him by reading what he says (primary sourcing) rather than some middle-person doing it for us.
And I want to see what – if any – his writing does to the Right. Whether he accepts it or not, he is hugely popular with the Alt-Right.
And remember – people like von Hayek, Buchanan and Freidman were once too not taken seriously – and then look what happened. We dismiss stuff like this at our peril.
John Collins,
I don’t take to the tone of either of those. I think I’ll just settle for getting my own copy.
Simon (and even Richard)
Yes – I can’t disagree with you concerns about Peterson at all. To me his statement about the Left – well he’s goading us into thinking about that really – its a challenge in some respects – that’s how I see it.
He also states that the Left is only good at getting the oppressed to fight the oppressed rather than to fight the oppressor. I’m not sure how this works – he obviously did not live in a country ‘managed’ by David Cameron and George Osbourne and has not read the history of Right Wing Fascism either. But people like Peterson stir things up like a virus. And the best thing progressives can do in response is to boost their immune systems (refine and make more robust their arguments) to fight Peterson off. He is a gift to us as well as the Alt Right – which he says he is not part of.
But I say again, the most interesting thing about him at the moment, at this time, is his focus on individualism and how he has spoken of individuals becoming reconnected with the world around them as the basis for a new morality (which insinuates to me that Peterson thinks whatever morality exists now is flawed in some way).
Can the Right as we know it change? And if it does as a result of Peterson’s intervention, what are the consequences? Good? Bad? Let’s see.
A poetic post if ever I read one. You might find this interesting…
https://theconversation.com/how-neoliberalism-is-damaging-your-mental-health-90565
The latest news about Capita, following closely after Carillon, suggests another possible tipping point. Most of these large, multi-service outsourcing companies represent the kind of financial engineering that epitomises today’s capitalism. Value extraction in the finest traditions of the vampire squid. If and when they go belly up, they affect lots of other organisations, financially and operationally. Potential for a domino effect
The 40% drop in share price is a good indicator of just how nervous the market is, underneath the bluster
@Lee
Thanks for the Conversation link. It mentions Paul Verhaegh, who was recently interviewed by Ross Ashcroft for Renegade Inc – https://renegadeinc.com/neoliberalism-force-isnt-with-you.
This mounting academic and empirical evidence that Neo-liberalism is more a life-threatening virus (or parasite) than a credible economic theory, must eventually register with populations at large. It’s akin to iatrogenisis (as expounded by Ivan Illich in his 1974 book ‘Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health’) where the appplied medicine is worse than the disease.
We can only hope the patient (i.e. society) doesn’t die before it’s too late. Maybe I’m being over-dramatic, but I see it as a race against time.