The gaps in modern society

The industrial revolution “reorganised” society – it shattered the idea of individual worth which had survived, to some extent, the inherent inequality and belittling (of the everyday person – what would be blue collar or working class today) evil of monarchy and Empire, and reduced individuals to cogs who were concentrated and used until discarded.

In those days, the greatest need was for physical survivability, and unions evolved in that context. They gave us the 8 hour working day, they have been instrumental in safety regulations, and they became well-organised at obtaining fairer pay.

They were needed, and they did their job, probably right up until the mid- to late-20^th Century.

I’ll come back to unions, but let’s now briefly consider politics – in the specific sense of the functioning of Parliamentary democracy. This goes back to the struggles between the elites and monarch in the 1100s and 1200s (including the British Magna Carta of 1215, and the Magna Carta for the Kingdom of León in 1188), but wound up opening the door for some access to decency of life for the people who had less power than the elites – again, what would be blue collar or working class today.

Politics has evolved and developed, with a halting, somewhat to-and-fro lurch towards better democracies. It has focused on the physical organisation of society, up until the second half of the 20^th Century.

And the life of blue collar or working class people has also changed since the mid-20^th Century, moving away from the subservience to national sovereignty and physical conditions of life to a slow, cautious and sometimes reluctant embrace of the benefits of less material aspects of life, the pursuit of human rights, and a quest for a sense of meaning.

That quest for meaning did not, in my opinion, arise from the erosion of formal, organised and old stilted forms of religion, which had become focused on power and dogma millennia ago, but from the fact that the quest for physical survival was no longer so predominant.

In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, once the survival needs are met, people can move on to acknowledging and meeting other needs, and that started with the rebelliousness of the 60s (which I reacted to with the disapproval of a child inclined towards being a “square” – I have become far more radical as I have grown and seen and experienced abuses).

(This had also started in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but World War One put an end to that.)

Politics responded to that fairly well, at first, with the adoption of a broadening of the role of government that, to some extent, had its modern origins in FDR’s New Deal of the 1930s. Even Unions started to get in on the scene, with some activist strikes.

But then the elites struck back – neoliberalism was born (initially called economic rationalism here), and politics was wrenched back towards a focus on material matters, mostly through a focus on budgets and money (the so-called "fight against big government" swamped the fight against corporations so ably expressed in the original Star Trey TV series of the 60s). The elites were well organised, and they had their toadies, and as a result working and middle class people were befuddled and unaware, and thus bought in to the premise that money mattered, and Unions were totally outmanoeuvred and also fell back into a focus on the physical.

The world went from the hope and change of the 60s to the “Greed is Good” evil of the 1980s – just two decades that saw the everyday person set back to the psychological state of the 1800s and the Industrial Revolution, where the pressure to survive cut back on time for thinking and energy for activism. It was a state that led, ultimately, to the widespread victories of neoliberalism, and the rise of the far right as the peoples of the nations of the world drew fearfully in on themselves.

Against that, however, some people fought back – just as some always have, whether they were religious mystics in deserts and on mountains, human rights activists, politico-social progressives, or even “just” people pursuing a sea change/tree change.

Nowadays the warriors of change for the better are led by climate change activists, who are leading a fight to survival – again, yes, but the most profound since the threats of the Cold War brought us to the brink of a nuclear winter.

The Cold War was easier to win – due, in large part, to things such as evils of business propaganda that Bernays introduced, the vicious effectiveness of the elites and their toadies acting through neoliberalism, and the distraction and intellectual . . . laziness(?) of everyday people.

We have probably passed the point of no return as far numbers of human on this planet is concerned - the environmental consequences of climate change are too close to critical for the limited numbers of people who have the requisite desperation to win (I may be wrong, of course).

This is not helped by the rise of conservatism in politics, which has been aided historically by the continuing focus of more progressive mainstream parties on material matters, dithering (the opportunity lost by the Federal ALP in 2007 for some form of carbon tax, in part undone by hard line position of the Greens, was unforgiveable), by the errors of parties that were focused on environmental matters in preaching to the choir, and by the fears and refusal to admit changing circumstances of everyday people who voted conservatives in.
(There is also an obduracy of the bureaucracy that brought US President Obama undone, to some extent, and stops attempts to address problems such as the abuse of the punishment system - e.g., the psychological harm akin to being sexually assaulted of strip searches, which police refuse to even acknowledge.)

Those votes have, ultimately, been the biggest problem – and activists have failed to do enough on that score, in my opinion, and scientists and academics totally stuffed up their communication on this from the 80s until about ten years ago (the edited emails controversy did damage that is still lasting).

What hasn’t helped has been others buying in to the premise of the neoliberals – from the unions focus on pay and safety when broader thinking was required, to the greed of everyday Australians starting to think houses were a source of wealth rather than a place to live and the blindness and fear of politicians who cater to that rather than allowing smaller (including “tiny” homes).

And that has not been aided by the media, who have focused on the fleeting and sensational too often, at the expense of broader analysis and commentary (that we’re now getting with a number of outlets and journalists – to a depth and extent that was missing in the crucial 90s and 2000s). Under the pressures of modern life, pressures which should not exist, everyday people have needed the media to do the role of broadening perspective to a greater extent than they have.

In my opinion, to quite an extent media have set themselves up for the competition with social media by things such as tolerating / allowing the tabloid trash to continue existing and publishing their gossip – areas of the media are now doing much better (particularly the Conversation and the Guardian Australia), but will it be enough to overcome the tabloid trash’s power over everyday people?

People – voters – have also aided the problems we’re now facing (I struggle to understand how anyone could vote for Abbott). Political parties have organisations and styles that are largely focused on their support base, and occasionally delve into wider bases and lead to a win and maybe even a change of some sort, but their internal structures have significant parts that are focused on the quest for votes  i.e., political power, and that can make it hard for people who want to contribute to a change (it requires patience and [years of] persistence, and good argument to convince those in policy rooms – and, from time to time, a break).

There are, however, alternatives – such as the participatory democracy in some parts of South America. Getting those up, however, requires breadth of vision and depth of thought in the media, skill from advocates that would enable overcoming of the psychological and emotional scars that so many people have these days (which is something I may publish an essay on shortly), and commitment to change in politicians (which some have).

So where are we left?

I see many of the problems we face as gaps – breaks in “visionariness” (as shown in many unions in the late 20^th Century), gaps between vision and communication (not aided by the short term focus and limited spread of effective ethics in the media), and a disconnect between vision and ability to act (affecting both political parties and everyday people who want simpler, lower impact lives).

Facing those gaps, and notwithstanding efforts so far to overcome them, I consider that the best hope we have is for everyday people to stop buying in to the premises of conventional society, including that we should have convenience and “stuff”, and choose to live their lives focused on material minimalism and non-material meaning.

Unfortunately, finding a way to survive while doing that is not easy.

(PS - see here - some interesting comments about setbacks in the late 70s)