Mark Cooney, who films and edits my YouTube videos, suggested we make a special for bank holiday Monday. As I am spending the day marking a significant birthday for a younger member of my family I thought I'd reflect on what really matters in life, and the fact that young people in the UK seem to be so much more stressed than those in other countries at present.
The question then is ‘what really matters?' And the problem in the UK is that it seems that we have let economists answer that question.
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What a wonderful, insightful broadcast! The economy should serve the interests of all people and our planet (flora, fauna, and its ecosystems); it is not simply the sum of all businesses that must be served by the people in order to create vast wealth for a minority. You are one of the few people to actually ask ‘What is the economy for?’ And what better time for economists and politicians to be thinking this way? The climate crisis, inequality and the pandemic, to mention just some of the problems facing the world, should be provoking a widespread rethink. It may happen (and I have great faith in the young) but it will require old habits (such as neoliberal economic theory and the zero-sum cult of competition) to be abandoned and replaced with long-term, intelligent kindness.
Thank you for this video.
You’re right to identify the lack of resilience as a fundamental problem. You’re right to point out the dire effect of this on our children and young people. But the lack of existential security and hope for the future takes its toll on people of all ages, surrounded as we are by all our hollowed out social institutions. Lack of individual, community and environmental resilience is the hallmark of our dog-eat-dog unsustainable economy. Furthermore, in the neglect of building resilience in the face of climate change, it heralds the potential demise of our entire civilisation.
What really matters to individuals and communities is an important topic. I have claimed on numerous occasions since 2008 GFC that a society, which does not look after it’s young people, is a society which will fail. I think the UK and the US, particularly, are well down the road of failure.
I can also echo your concerns about the anxiety levels of young people. I see this at work every year, and it has got worse over the years since I started as a lecturer in this country. It has changed what I care about in my job. I put much more time and effort into confidence building than I did when I first started. I recognize that my generation have seriously shafted the younger generations in terms of things that matter outlined in this video. Too much economism and not enough communism (in the sense of everyday reciprocity outside of monetary exchanges – not state communism).
Thanks
Curiously I spent a lot of time at lunch talking to a young man who’d been invited
I sense low self esteem and a feeling he did not matter and was at the back of the queue
Some one to one effort was put in explaining how he could be of significance
I hope it is one of those conversations that sticks in his memory and has the intended effect of boosting his self-esteem. It’s always worth the time and effort.