Public
services should be privatised, public spending should be cut, and business
should be freed from social control. In countries such as the UK and the US,
this story has shaped our norms and values for around 35 years: since Thatcher
and Reagan came to power. It is rapidly
colonising the rest of the world.
·
Every society
defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to
dominant narratives, and seeks either to make people comply or to exclude them
if they don’t.
·
Neoliberalism
draws on the ancient Greek idea that our ethics are innate (and governed by a
state of nature it calls the market) and on the Christian idea that humankind
is inherently selfish and acquisitive. Unrestricted competition, driven by
self-interest, leads to innovation
- But even at the
beginning of the process, when markets are first deregulated, we do not
start with equal opportunities. Some people are a long way down the track
before the starting gun is fired.
- How the Russian
oligarchs managed to acquire such wealth when the Soviet Union broke up.
- They weren’t, on the
whole, the most talented, hardworking or innovative people, but those
with the fewest scruples, the most thugs, and the best contacts – often
in the KGB.
- Also, once the first
generation of liberated entrepreneurs has made its money, the initial
meritocracy is replaced by a new elite, which insulates its children from
competition
- No one should start
life with the unfair advantage of inherited wealth or economically
determined education. But they never believed in their own doctrine.
Enterprise, as a result, quickly gave way to rent.
·
The market
was meant to emancipate us, offering autonomy and freedom. Instead it has
delivered atomisation and loneliness.
- The workplace has
been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafkaesque infrastructure of assessments,
monitoring, measuring, surveillance and audits, centrally directed and
rigidly planned, whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the
losers.
- Whether in work or
out of work, we must live by the same rules or perish
·
The same
forces afflict those who can’t find work. They must now contend, alongside the
other humiliations of unemployment, with a whole new level of snooping and
monitoring.
- All the major
political parties promote them, so we have no political power either
- In the name of
autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless
bureaucracy
·
Depression
and loneliness plague us. Verhaeghe writes, by a spectacular rise in certain
psychiatric conditions: self-harm, eating disorders, depression and personality
disorders.
- Of the personality
disorders, the most common are performance anxiety and social phobia:
both of which reflect a fear of other people, who are perceived as both
evaluators and competitors
·
The
infantilising diktats of the workplace destroy our self-respect.
·
So, if you don’t
fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and
frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed – it could be because you have retained
the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be
proud.
No comments:
Post a Comment