It definitely is the system

The brilliant, readable and insightful book, The Invisible Doctrine – The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life) by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison makes clear the real global societal problem (certainly in the Global North and Western World, if not the burgeoning Global South that is sold the misguided and unfair ‘dream’) is neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism really screws up nearly any other effort to define, focus and enact real systemic changes across a capitalist hegemony that really doesn’t give a shit about Earth, its resources, its limits or fairness, just short-term power, status and monetary profit.

It is highly misleading to describe neoliberalism as ‘free-market economics’. In many ways it’s quite the opposite. Neoliberalism is the tool used by the very rich to accumulate more wealth and power. Neoliberalism is class war.

The book makes clear some very important societal issues and that really, despite neoliberal attempts over the last 50 or so years, everything is actually connected (as espoused and implied by many different areas and professions and trades across many a book I have read in the last decade or so) and important to the bridging network, talked of in the quoted passage below, that is so much more inclusive, relevant and respectful of the whys and wherefores of differences and diversity for the collective benefit of all, including our live-sustaining home, Earth.

Over the past few years, findings from several different sciences – psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology – have pointed to something that should be obvious, and would be, had we not been induced to believe the Hobbesian notion that competition is the default state of humanity. As it turns out, we have a remarkable capacity for altruism.¹ While we all possess some degree of selfishness and greed, these are not our dominant values.² Most people are primarily motivated by more social values: altruism, empathy, family, community, and the pursuit of a better world – not only for themselves but also for others.

We are also, among mammals, the supreme co-operators, able to work together towards common ends in far more complex and pre-emptive ways than other mammals can. These are the central, crucial characteristics of humankind: our astonishing altruism and cooperation. But something has gone horribly wrong.

Our good nature has been thwarted by several forces – not least of which is the dominant political narrative of our times, one that motivates us to live in competition with each other. It encourages conflict, drives us to fear and mistrust one other. It atomizes society. It weakens the social bonds that make our lives worth living. In this vacuum, violent and intolerant forces grow.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. We can recover the best attributes of our humanity: our altruism and cooperation. Where there is atomization, we can build a thriving civic life with a rich participatory culture. Where we find ourselves crushed between market and state, we can build an economics that respects both people and planet.

Where we have been ignored and exploited, we can revive our politics. We can recover democracy from the people who have captured it. We can use new, fairer election rules to ensure that financial power never trumps democratic power again. Representative democracy should be tempered by participatory democracy, enabling us to refine our political choices. These choices should be exercised as much as possible at the local level. If something can be decided locally, it should not be determined nationally.

We call this shift, which aims to reclaim some of the powers that have been taken from our communities, the ‘Politics of Belonging’ – something we believe can appeal to a wide range of people. Among the few values shared by both left and right are belonging and community. We might mean slightly different things by them, but at least we can begin with a common language. A large part of politics can be seen as a search for belonging – a fundamental human need. Even fascists seek community and belonging, albeit a disturbing version where everyone looks the same, believes the same, wears the same uniform, waves the same flag, and chants the same slogans.

Steering people away from fascism – a common response to political and societal dysfunction – requires an answer to the need for belonging. Fascism seeks a bonding network: one that brings together people from a homogeneous group. Its antithesis is the bridging network: one that brings together people from different groups. Only through building sufficiently rich and vibrant bridging communities can we hope to thwart people's urge to burrow into the security of a bonding community, defending themselves against the ‘Other’.

So our new Restoration Story could go something like this:

Disorder afflicts the land, caused by the powerful and nefarious forces of people who tell us that our highest purpose in life is to fight like stray dogs over a dustbin. But the heroes of the story, the common people long deprived of the democratic power we were promised, will revolt against this disorder. We will fight those nefarious forces by building rich, engaging, collaborative, inclusive and generous communities. In doing so, we will restore harmony to the land.

Our task is to tell the story that will light the path to a better world.

George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison The Invisible Doctrine

We are architects not bees and as is mentioned in the book (and others of similar importance and subject) when given the chance for involvement, people get involved and feel relevant, enthused and empowered to contribute and support society collectively.

Neoliberalism’s flawed model of how the world works leads to similar outcomes in every sphere of activity: finance, human prosperity, mental health, ecosystems. To admit anything is to admit everything. So, instead of addressing these flaws, corporate and oligarchic capital seeks to disguise them.

One means of doing so has been to shift responsibility from government and structural forces to individual forces, blaming ordinary people for the very crises that have been imposed on them. Just as the poor have been condemned for their poverty – and sometimes come to internalize this belief – so ‘consumers’ have been blamed for the economic model driving the Sixth Great Extinction of life on Earth.

This shift from addressing our problems collectively to addressing them individually points to what is arguably the most decisive transition in communications strategy of the past fifty years. In a brilliant public-relations coup, we have been induced by corporate marketing and media propaganda to ignore massive economic and political forces, and focus instead on individual micro-solutions. Through yet another counterintuitive hustle, consumerism – the presenting problem – is also presented as the answer. We are inculcated with the belief that we don’t need to stop consuming – in fact, we need to keep consuming, just ‘consume better’.

The book is a great answer to many of my long-held questions (certainly more so since my survival of a life-changing incident that essentially was because of a neoliberally-led vehicle, driver, licensing authority etc. etc.) and challenges my views and opinions that I’ve held and have been informed by many things, over many years and, also makes clear (without being patronising or lost in communications- nor marketing-like spiel) that it is definitely the system – neoliberalism – that needs to be gone from the world.

It’s the only way to allow real, meaningful and productive societal (especially political and economic) change to happen – it must if we are to genuinely, progressively and inclusively move forward from the self-created shit-show that neoliberalism has led us on.