You don’t live in the real world, they tell me. You don’t understand how it really is. You’re naive and an idiot. Well, maybe I am. But nonetheless I continue to believe that the world of soil and trees is the real world, while the world of economics, is fantasy. I believe that most people are ok, and that if you treat people kindly, most of them will be able to be kinder people.
The thing about my naivety is that the evidence backs it up. Under austerity, crime has gone up because more people are desperate. Resources are in fact finite where the logic of economics involves infinite growth. Everywhere universal basic income has been trialled, all kinds of social benefits follow. Both crime stats and hospital admissions go down.
What we do when we are grasping, and cynical about each other, living in the dog eat dog logic of a brutal real world, is we make everything worse. We make our own reality, collectively, and if we push this way, this is what we get. It is not inevitable, or necessary, it is a choice.
Other choices are available.
If we choose to be kinder to each other and to other species, things would be different. If we choose to live responsibly and within our means, we could change our relationship with the planet. From the dog-eat-dog perspective that would just be setting ourselves up to be beaten by other countries, passed by their willingness to exploit more than we do. We’d be weak, the underdog, the dog who is eaten in the dog-eat-dog world. Step back a moment and this looks more like a choice between destroying ourselves to ‘win’ some imaginary game that delivers nothing in terms of happiness, and not doing that.
The UK is the 5th biggest economy in the world, and yet we cannot, apparently, feed our hungry, home our people, keep our children out of poverty or protect our landscapes. It’s an odd sort of wealth that cannot achieve these things. It makes me ask what on earth a measure of wealth means given that life expectancy has gone down of late. From where I’m sat, it doesn’t look like wealth at all, it looks like terrible poverty and misery for many people. But hey, keep telling me about this real world you live in.
January 12th, 2019 at 11:14 am
Reblogged this on Thesseli.
January 12th, 2019 at 1:04 pm
Reblogged this on Blue Dragon Journal.
January 12th, 2019 at 1:52 pm
Right!?!!!
January 12th, 2019 at 2:37 pm
At the beginning of this year, I made my FB post about what 2018 brought. With that I included a need to be more kind in our actions. I am glad to be a part of a calling for more kindness in the world and that this is being said by others.
January 14th, 2019 at 8:42 am
I think there are many of us emerging in different ways at the moment. It’s good not to feel alone.
January 12th, 2019 at 4:33 pm
So true. The worst part for me is thinking that when this bubble inevitably bursts there will be so much suffering. I really hope people can find some solidarity and organize to mitigate the worst of it. Time is clicking thought: 12 years …
January 14th, 2019 at 7:30 am
I got involved with the transition Towns movement in response to that – a way of building some community resilience.
January 12th, 2019 at 5:24 pm
You are right!
January 14th, 2019 at 12:14 am
I agree with you, governments are big business, no doubt about that! It is left to the small people to help those who have fallen on hard times! We have done it in the past, so, Big Business feels we should do it again, while they laugh all the way to the bank!
January 14th, 2019 at 8:43 am
it’s crazy isn’t it, that it is the poorest in our society who most often give in order to help others. but at the same time, there’s a lot of hope to be taken from that.