This post follows naturally from a previous one on potential. It may be useful to read that post first.
But what is potential?
It isn't unlimited.
None of us is born with infinite possibilities.
We each have one lifetime.
One body.
One mind.
One set of relationships.
One place in the world.
One chance to become the person we might be.
Our potential is finite.
It is also unique.
No two people have exactly the same talents, opportunities, interests or aspirations. My potential is not yours. Yours is not mine.
That matters because it changes what we mean by a successful economy.
A successful economy is not one in which one person realises extraordinary potential while millions never have the chance to discover their own.
Nor is it one in which everyone is forced to become the same thing.
The goal is not to maximise one person's achievement.
Or one company's profits.
Or one country's GDP.
The goal is to maximise the realised potential of all.
That is something quite different.
It means ensuring that every person has the food, shelter, healthcare, education, security, freedom and opportunity they need to become as fully themselves as they are capable of being.
The basics are essential: then people can grow.
Some people will become artists.
Some engineers.
Some parents.
Some carers.
Some teachers.
Some gardeners.
Some entrepreneurs.
Some scientists.
Some thinkers.
Some will quietly transform the lives of the people around them in ways no statistic will ever record.
None of those lives is more valuable than another.
What matters is that each person has the opportunity to realise the potential that is uniquely theirs.
That, surely, is what well-being means.
It is not about giving everyone everything.
Nor is it about making anyone everything.
It is about creating the conditions in which each of us can become as much as we are capable of becoming.
Perhaps that is what economics has forgotten.
Its purpose is not to maximise output.
It is not to maximise consumption.
It is not even to maximise wealth.
Its purpose is to help every one of us realise as much of our finite human potential as we can, while ensuring that we leave future generations with the same opportunity.
It is to that task that energy and money must be put.
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Yes!
Trying (but failing) to keep my wordage down to suit your present predicament, our current problem is clearly pleonexia – that we have a system that covets other people’s output or as you say their ‘being’. Unbridled capitalism (which is where are going now) is simply monopolism. Monopolists are only interested in other people until that have taken what the others have. After acquisition, those people are worth nothing and can be chucked away.
For example, the increasing destruction of Britain’s manufacturing base led to the rather fair post war social security system picking up the tab, as the state picked up the costs of private theft – buy outs, asset stripping. And yet, blame was passed onto the workers who had ‘never had it so good’ and you end with a ‘Job seekers allowance’. The crimes of capitalism covered up by the state and books like ‘Britannia Unchained’.
Things are as they are because of this stupid vicious ‘blame game’ perpetrated on ordinary people trying ‘to be’ whilst their lives and ‘being’ is being stolen by greedy monopolists (who would be considered as extremists in any other field of human behaviour) and the state has increasingly colluded with this to its shame.
It’s disgusting. And then they wonder why democracy is in such a mess?
The realisation of individual potential is, I think, just the first step or at least one element of the bigger picture which is about the relationship we have with the world in general and each other in particular. The analogy of cells in the body always resonates with me as research has shown that cells are able to act independently but according to a shared destination (not through DNA as it happens) that all cells spend their effort on achieving – the functioning human form.
The value of our individual potential is, I feel, to contribute in all our different ways to a functioning planet. The indigenous South African term ‘ubuntu’ captures this well.
Most useful for considering so many policies, actions, habits … personal, local, national and global.
To pick up one concept; You wrote: ‘it changes what we mean by a successful economy’.
This week’s inescapable issue is climate change and, no matter how useful or enjoyable travel by air, sea or road may be, the prosperity (perhaps the existence) of the next few generations … need the current body of humans to make massive cuts in carbon dioxide emissions – starting immediately.
My previous note refers to ‘travel’ which is probably the biggest source of CO2 – and which could relatively easily be hugely reduced. But, of course, there are buildings, agriculture, industry, waste disposal, fuel supply, electricity …
Travel emissions – Flying: About 60 years ago, my sister worked as a ship’s nurse. Once passengers included the Australian cricket team.
Speed. From Pearl Harbour until the end of WWII in Europe. the American road speed limit was 35 mph.
Water, electricity and gas: the current system is a ‘standing charge’ followed by progressively lower rates for bulk use. To encourage minimal usage, the pattern needs to be: low charges for basic needs, and then increasing charges for bulk (extravagant) use.
Future generations can deserve chance of living in a climate that remains within healthy limits. We could, almost certainly, do it – and be happy. Do we want to?
The decision makers at the pointy top of the inequalty power/wealth pyramid “appear” to have reached their potential, although they (destructively for the rest of us) keep reaching for more (colonising Gaza or Mars).
Those just below them, especially those currently in politics, look acquisitively upwards, wanting MORE, and make (destructive) decisions to preserve the (destructive) status quo, so they can achieve their “potential” and “become” more like the people above them, not realising that this makes them LESS human.
The rest of us struggle along, coping with the results, trying to survive & not to slide backwards. “Becoming” is something of an idealistic dream.
Human beings are capable of so much more, as you describe above, and are intended, along with the whole of the planet we steward, to “become” so much more. That’s my “anthropology of hope”, and yes, it is faith-based. But then I assume that anyone, struggling against the odds, to make the world a better place, is working from a faith-based anthropology of hope, because they believe we can do better than this, and will. That puts us all in the same team.
Here’s to the shattering of neoliberalism and your kidney stones. May the latter be VERY soon.
RobertJ
I would say that what has actually happened is that those at the top of your triangle have actually exceeded their potential to the point where their wealth means that they preside over us. These people will not buy more pillow cases or jeans or other stuff as billionaire Nick Hanauer (The Pitchforks are Coming) points out. Instead, they will buy assets like property, aircraft, other people’s hard work (competitiors) and ensure that that is sustainable for them to continue to do so by purchasing the means of control – the very democracy that is supposed to balance all competing needs.
Fundamentally this relates to something Richard has always spoken about and does not happen – double entry book keeping. Excessive pay and profits are not just made out of thin air; they come from somewhere else where there is a corresponding lack that is not being accounted for that is prejudicial to the ‘being’ of others.
What drives this is cannot be excused by something like fear. What drives it is not putting a ceiling on it, to the point where ‘having enough’ is too open a question. It is wealth without limits which is really a form of ignorance, which itself is a part of Pleonexia, ‘Dragon Sickness’ (Tolkien) or good old fashioned greed. It is about getting to the top of the heap, the front of the queue and making sure that you stay there.
@PSR
Agreed. I think those at the top of my inequality pyramid are like the pigs in the final pages of Animal Farm, who are losing (in some cases have lost) their animality. C.S. Lewis describes this process when some talking beasts in the Narnia series become dumb beasts. He also describes the horrific gradual inner disintegration of humanity of the “Unman” who used to be Professor Weston, in his Perelandra/Voyage to Venus book.
Forget Dante & mediaeval pictures of demons with pitchforks – a much more terrible hell is the irretrievable loss of humanity – the deliberate destructive choice to descend into a self-created total darkness of meaningless moral oblivion. You can’t inflict that on anyone, it is always a deliberate yet avoidable choice for oneself. At times in history, including in our own time, we have had the doubtful privilege of witnessing evil people make that awful choice, and not all are national leaders – some corruptly command smaller ponds – maybe we have worked for one?
I suspect the tilting point, when redemption becomes impossible, is the point at which someone has deliberately acquired total power within their sphere of responsibility. At that point their descent into the darkness that is the loss of their humanity, is by definition, unstoppable, because their acquisition of total power means they won’t listen to correction (its all in Proverbs – look up “the fool”!). They can then only be stopped by being destroyed/deposed/defenestrated. (Trump is over that line, so is Musk, but Fa***e hasn’t quite got there yet, because of his lack of power, not because of any virtue).
Maybe that’s one of the benefits of a good PR system?
If I had to summarise the entirety of Greek philosophy into one English then the word I choice is becoming. The acorn becomes a tree. That is the purpose of the acorn. The purpose of an acorn is not to remain being an acorn. Sometimes the purpose is not entirely clear and we could say that there were a potential number of different becomings. My understanding is that a good life is when we are happy with the potential we have ended up with.
I would add we all of us, without exception, the same in that we all want is to be happy and free from suffering
Whilst external conditions can trigger happiness or unhappiness, ultimately true, longstanding happiness comes from a clam, peaceful mind. So good mental health underwrites a flourishing life for all of us
I am not sure what happiness is.
I use flourishing, which is much broader, I think.
I think children need far more of this kind of information/education at school.
Most have no philosophical teaching at home, or encouragement to see the possibilities of life and how it can become so much more than the limits of their familiar surroundings.
I think many children suffer from.the limitations closing in on them and I think schools should do much less academic cramming and much more to do with seeing and enjoying life experience opportunities.
[…] have already begun a series of articles on the economics of hope, the third of which was published this morning. However, one of the luxuries of the last week, created by the fact that I was ill, was that, […]