Fracturing of the neoliberal economic world view
If you and I are in a swimming pool and I want the right to pee in the pool, and you want the right to swim in a pool without pee in it, what do we do?
Who has freedom of choice?
Our current neoliberal economic system is built on the false belief that people are selfish and will do what is in their own interest. This belief has been debunked.
The neoliberal economic system is also built on the principles of individual rights surpassing all else.
My right to carry a gun, my right to not wear a mask, my right to free speech, no matter the consequence.
The foundations of entire markets are built around these neoliberal beliefs. Therefore, when we debunk them, we are asking people to completely change not just their worldview but the ‘everything’ on which they have carefully and often, over a long period of time, constructed their safe, privileged and ‘secure’ lives.
To even begin to sense that the foundation upon which lives have been built is no longer true is to raise the immanent threat of identity loss, security loss, investment loss…all losses too big to face.
So people bunker down and go into that murky zone of refusing to budge.
They fail to see the hypocrisy that has become their lives. I want my freedom of speech rights, but if you publish stuff I do not like about me, then all hell will break loose.
I want to be able to pee in the pool, but if you do that, I will be mad.
The shift to a worldview that recognises that if you do not wear a mask, you are putting others at risk; if you want a more peacefuld, then do not speak with hate or violence in any form and healed worl is the gateway to the disintegration of a carefully constructed life.
The beautiful question becomes, how do we enable this gateway to be open without too much collateral damage, and is this indeed possible?
Photo taken January 16th 2021
