New Project: Chapter 27
Economics are difficult. Emotions are more so. After the election, Trump surrogates postulated that in an information age there are no such things as facts. People believe what they choose to believe and facts, in this context, are irrelevant. This is terrifying. Orwell’s 1984 posited the same thing. The Ministry of Peace was all about war. The Ministry of Truth was all about propaganda. Duck Speak was a way to minimize vocabulary to ensure a limitation of thought. Orwell was brilliant and a savant, but only because he was a student of human nature.
In a recent blog post, Seth Godin said, “The other person is always right. Always right about feelings.
About the day he just experienced.
About the fears (appropriate and ill founded) in his life.
About the narrative going on, unspoken, in his head.
About what he likes and what he dislikes.
You’ll need to travel to this place of ‘right’ before you have any chance at all of actual communication.”
Godin hits the nail on the head. I am right and so are you. Right, in spite of facts, is right. Emotional logic is far more powerful than reasoned logic. Most people, tired of hurting, will believe anything or anyone who promises to take the hurt away – even when they’re factually wrong, even when their “right” compounds the hurt.
We see this in relationships all the time. Most fights, on the surface, are stupid. But when we look deeper, they are about desire, the responsibility it entails, and the difficulty with honesty. I hurt. Something happened that triggered a response I didn’t intend and now, faced with confronting or denying it, I string together a litany of “truths” that have no basis in objective reality, but support the “feeling” I have that you injured me. The last thing I want to do is inflict more hurt. There’s enough of it in the world, but I can’t help myself. My pain screams louder than yours.
Those that would manipulate us for their own gain understand this. They feed it, dishing out tasty lumps of outrage, impotence, and “empathy” at just the right moments to ensure the outcome they desire. We eat them up, cope in all the ways we can, and believe their promises will save us because we cannot save ourselves. Their promises are shields against our fears and we believe them when they say wages will go up, jobs will be abundant, and the bank will not foreclose. Once we’ve elected them, or allowed the big box into our community, the family will get food, medicine, education, and standing in this world.
Governments and corporations play us using language that evokes emotional convictions about morality. We buy into their promise that after the event (be it corporate or governmental) the noise and lightening and wind will abate and we will finally do more than merely survive. The sky will clear and hope will loom bright as the sun. Unfortunately, the weather always changes and it is only a matter of time until the next despot, demagogue, or corporate interest decides our worth is less than theirs.
Neoliberalism is a method through which the emotional convictions of a populace are manipulated against their own interests to secure the financial interests of a wealthy minority. NAFTA was supposed to be a gem of international policy that would result in hundreds of thousands of jobs. Instead, it ensured the wealthiest fifteen percent of Mexican elites reap more than half of Mexico’s annual GDP.
Stabilization policies in Latin America – Brazil, Nicaragua, and others –were supposed to usher in democratic governments and expanding markets that would lift people out of poverty and warfare. Instead, they led to rapidly declining wages, food scarcity, and the loss of decades of social progress for the masses while securing outrageous profits for those nations’ elite and American corporations.
Under the pretense of democracy and the free market, the United States (along with other industrialized nations) has coerced, bullied, and illegally interfered with other nations to secure corporate interests on a global scale. Globalization and the pursuit of democracy, though touted as good and fundamentally necessary to secure better prospects for the world’s population, has in fact destroyed the prospects of most. We are sold a story about the free market which is fundamentally untrue. For much of the last hundred years, the free market has been controlled by governments through regulation, bail outs, and subsidies to benefit corporate interests at the expense of the working classes.
According to Noam Chomsky, since NAFTA was enacted the number of impoverished people living in rural Mexico increased by a third and, “Half the population lacks resources to meet basic needs, a dramatic increase since 1980.”
Truth matters, but it is arbitrary because it depends on one’s perspective. You and I are sitting at a table. Between us is a vase filled with roses. From my perspective, the vase has an inscription etched into the glass. There are three blooms, one fading a little, and a host of little white flowers that compliment the spray.
You tell me there is no inscription because, from your perspective, there is none. You also see four roses and a lot of green leaves. What you and I see are different. Both are real. Both are valid. I can move to your side, see what you see, and remember what I saw, but I can never see both sides at once. Neither can you. This is where empathy comes in, where it becomes essential. I must trust that what you see and describe is true. You must do the same because we are both right. The fact is, there is a vase filled with roses, little white flowers, and green stuff on the table. How each of us chooses to interpret what we see is different, equally valid, and only part of the whole. What I choose to believe about your “truth” is rooted not in observable fact, but on my emotional and physical need to trust you.
In the aftermath of the election, a group of women began to organize a million women march on Washington, D.C. There were cries for solidarity, a collective relief that something was being done, and a lot of unanswered questions. The organizers, in their rush and enthusiasm, initially called the event “The March on Washington.” Then, after some negative feedback, they changed the name. This engendered another attack by women of color who felt both names hijacked work already done by people of color for people of color.
Outrage ensued on both sides and the vitriol threatened the entire event. The name was changed, yet again, to satisfy those who felt their history absconded. Too little, too late. The damage, though unintentional, had been done. In this instance, as in most, a little ignorance and a lot of emotion caused well-intentioned people to miss important historical references. They didn’t do it on purpose, and perhaps even named the march in unconscious tribute to those who had gone before, yet they unwillingly let emotional urgency interfere with their goal.
We consistently miss historical references and the facts they reveal because emotions outweigh personal and collective experience. Solidarity and common morality trump (to use a word that is both relevant and repulsive) memory and facts. To our detriment, we would rather our fears be assuaged than face reality because we have learned to focus on what we get rather than what we give.
We are told democracy depends on compromise, that if we give a little we’ll get enough, that human rights are important, but economics matter more. After all, in a free market, all things are self-correcting. If the money flows, we’ll be all right.
The money, however, doesn’t flow, the market isn’t free, and democracy today is designed to protect property over social welfare and human rights. While we battle over American idealism and biblical reference, big government and small, rural morality and urban sophistication, we miss the crucial truth that those who make policy do so in their own best interests. The system we’re taught to revere is a golden calf. Collectively, we worship in folly at its feet, largely ignoring F. Scott Fitzgerald’s proclamation that, “The rich are different from you and me,” and voting with emotion instead of fact.
