George Monbiot: Neoliberalism – The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems

I have shared this excellent article by George Monbiot multiple times and am moved to share it once again. It is deeply important that we all understand the roots of what has brought us to this place we’re at today — the ecological and climate crises which threaten life on Earth, the extreme and devastating radicalism of the Trump presidency, the Dark Money and neoliberal ideology that has overtaken the Republican Party and most of the Democratic Party, endless war abroad and mass shootings at home, ever growing greed and the vast redistribution of wealth upwards, crushing poverty and inequality, the propaganda of polarization and all the ways that we are divided and turned against one another, the epidemics of addiction and depression, the demonization of immigrants and dehumanization of so many others, and the list goes on and on. There is an imperative that we see how all that plagues us is interconnected and that we cease trying to treat individual symptoms rather then the roots of the ideology that has brought so much suffering, destruction, and death. I also continue to highly recommend Riane Eisler’s latest book, “Nurturing Our Humanity” — https://centerforpartnership.org/pr…/nurturing-our-humanity/. Another world is possible! — Molly

 ‘No alternative’ … Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher at the White House.

Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative? 

By George Monbiot

Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.    

Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals now.

Please continue this article here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot?fbclid=IwAR2dPnD4qDSRt7I1Hg0GN75qQuEMq66WtKs2wo9o0Iz9aluPuYmmf_5EfaU 

Pema Chödrön: Our True Nature Is Fundamental Goodness

We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves — the heavy-duty fearing that we’re bad and hoping that we’re good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds — never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are – our true nature is fundamental goodness. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.

— Pema Chödrön 

Excerpted from The Pocket Pema Chödrön  
 https://www.shambhala.com/the-pocket-pema-chodron-1182.html

 

We Must End Neoliberalism, or Neoliberalism Will End Us

What an outstanding and extraordinary article! So well articulated, absolutely spot on, and incredibly important and needed. This also nails why I refuse to identify myself within the narrow neoliberal capitalist framework of being either a Democrat or Republican. It’s deeply important to understand the peril our nation and life on Earth is in. We didn’t get here because one political party is good and the other is bad. We’re facing the ecological and climate crises because to one degree or another we’ve unknowingly been complicit — regardless of political party — because of the neoliberal capitalist system that has been normalized in our country and too many other places worldwide. But especially here in America and especially by those of us who are wealthier and not indigenous or people of color. We humans are also increasingly waking up. I hope that you will read this excellent article and share. Thank you. 🙏 Molly

Faced with the near certainty of global ecological catastrophe resulting from deliberate human choice, we must free ourselves from the ideological constraints of neoliberalism or face extinction.

By Fred Guerin

In his seminal political essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” the dissident playwright and philosopher Vaclav Havel argued that becoming empowered requires us to “live in truth,” which means facing up to the uncomfortable reality that we are not solely victims of the political and economic order we live under, but sometimes also enablers who play into its myths and cover up its lies. We turn the lies into truth and come to believe it is the only way to get through, the only way to survive in what we are told again and again is a “dog-eat-dog” world. 

It is this uncomfortable truth that inevitably raises the question: Why has neoliberalism succeeded so well? The answer is unsettling precisely because it implicates all of us — at least all of us who live in industrial capitalist countries. Even if we are not equally blameworthy in creating such a monstrous ideology, we have all, in some measure, been co-opted into accepting neoliberal capitalism’s false premises and promises.

It is quite true that domestic and international economic and political structures that legitimize neoliberal capitalism are oriented by, and in the interest of, an elite corporate class. Yet in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis — the worst economic crash since 1929 — there has been no massive global uprising or any sustained call for radical institutional reform (with the exception of the short-lived grassroots Occupy Wall Street movement, and to some extent, France’s Yellow Vests movement).  

Continuous rebellion and dissent leading to revolution has not happened because we appear to have tacitly bought into an ideology that ensures our own powerlessness to transform ourselves or our societies. The good news is that this is changing. In the last few years, many have become conscious of the fact that civilizational collapse as a consequence of human-caused climate disruption is directly attributable to an economic and political system that views the Earth and everything that lives on it as an inexhaustible means for individual and corporate profit.

For the first time in human history, we are confronted by the near certainty of global ecological catastrophe and its resulting political and economic breakdown — not as a consequence of natural causes, nor the vengeful act of a deity, but as a result of deliberate human choice. The brutal reality is that the present world of neoliberal economics and politics simply could not have survived had we not gradually acquiesced to it. So how did this happen?  

THE BEGINNINGS OF NEOLIBERAL THOUGHT

Let’s begin with the following truism: When compared to more brutalizing regimes of dominance and militaristic authoritarianism throughout history, we do have a greater measure of freedom today. With the emergence of liberal social rights and the United Nations recognition and validation of international human rights after the horrors of two world wars, the corporate power elite and the governments that do their bidding implicitly understood that there would no longer be any toleration for political ideologies whose goal was to brutally repress human beings. So, the question for the latter was always how to ensure that the right class continued to be in a position of control and dominance, while at least providing the appearance of freedom and democracy for everyone else. 

First, what is required is the semblance of choice and economic power — an ersatz form of freedom realized through the mythical “self-organizing” and “self-correcting” “free market.” Free-market laissez-faire monopoly capitalism is expressly designed to counter any attempts by government to impose regulations on behalf of the public good that might impede profit, and to redefine citizens wholly as consumers. Human well-being is thereby reduced to a purely economic index.

Secondly, what is required is the semblance of democracy by way of electoral representative politics organized and paid for by moneyed interests. Lastly, what is required is the semblance of liberal institutional arrangements (education, social security, health care, policing, environmental and labor regulatory bodies) that increasingly do not serve public interest, but protect and serve private profit and business interests.

In conjunction with ersatz freedom of choice, democracy and the semblance of public institutions which appear to further or protect the public good, there is also what Havel might have called the semblance of liberal dissidence — those persons, regulatory bodies and political parties who make a pretense of fighting on behalf of the public good and in favor of health, labor and environmental rights, while continuing to forward a corporate rights agenda behind the backs of citizens.

In the contemporary world, the corporate capitalist class and the neoliberal governments that do their bidding have been able to maintain the upper hand not through sheer force or brutality, but because they have gradually been allowed to corrode democratic institutions and eviscerate the commons and, therefore, any sense of mutual obligation and responsibility humans have toward each other.

NEOLIBERALISM AND INSTRUMENTAL REASONING

It is crucial to recognize here that modern capitalism from the 19th century emerged in tandem with a particular sort of instrumental reasoning — the sort of use-oriented reasoning that seems innocuous and practical because it enables us to “get things done.”     

Please continue this article here: https://truthout.org/articles/we-must-end-neoliberalism-or-neoliberalism-will-end-us/ 
 

Shiloh Sophia: In Times of Great Sorrow

My dear friend Olivia shared this wise and loving poem by Shiloh Sophia with our women's circle. So timely in the wake of so much tragedy in our nation and beyond. Beautiful, powerful, and needed. Bless us all... Molly

In times of great sorrow

may you learn to be with the knowing

and not lose your joy.

In times of great collective undoing,

may you maintain a strong connection 

to your inner self.

In the journey of intense grief, 

may you feel everything,

and not lose your way home.

In times when it seems that truth is lost

may you hold fast to what is dear. 

When you are healed enough,

may you reach out to offer blessings to others.

May the revolution we are in need of

begin to rise in the heart of our community circles.

And please, rest when you are tired,

we need you whole and ready to lead.

May this blessing go out to where it is needed.

@Shiloh Sophia