The global economic system that perpetuates difference and prejudice
The global
economy, based on unfettered capitalism, needs a rethink. Free-market
capitalism, based on the control of a country’s trade and industry by private
owners, is prone to corruption, as regulatory mechanisms can be avoided. There
is so much money in the system already, being hoarded and not spent. Many
billionaires will not be able to spend all the money they have in their own
lifetimes. That’s a tough break for those poor billionaires. The economist
Thomas Piketty argues that the rate of capital return is persistently greater
than the rate of economic growth. This means simply that the rich will get
richer and the poor will get poorer, causing more inequalities of class and
race, and even more conflict in the future.
The regulatory
mechanisms already in place, such as trade agreements, World Bank loans, and
current interest payments, serve the developed nations who invented them, so
the dynamic will be difficult to change. Hypocrisy is built into our system. We
believe in the rule of law in a democratic system, but the same regulations
applied nationally do not apply internationally; corruption is fine if we do it
somewhere else, by propping up dictatorial regimes, selling weapons of mass destruction
to our allies, abusing the human rights of others or using tax havens to store
our ill-gotten gains. We also rely on
cheap labour and resources that we do not have in our own country, and
therefore need to justify conflict and the dehumanization of people that have
both the resources and the labour to maintain this differential. The ‘greed is
good’ philosophy has dominated for decades in our Western developed nations.
Our societies are culturally infused with the doctrine of selfish individualism,
and we become fearful when we think about others who may compete with us. “They
want what we have” is intrinsic in our racialized culture. When the economic
migrants and refugees seek to escape the wars and conditions that we are at
least to some degree responsible for, we freak out that they are coming over
here! There are so many decisions we make every day that are rooted in fear and
greed - a remnant of our primaeval past. There is even a Fear and Greed Index
which illustrates how the stock market and the economy are driven: a reflection
of the national sentiment in our consciousness.
Fear and Greed Index. Credit:
CNN
Selfish
individualism, vulnerable to these forces of fear and greed, is the driving
mechanism of our capitalist economy. It is therefore unsustainable, and will
eventually result in its own destruction. Every revolution in history, and
perhaps even every conflict, was born out of inequality, and it would be
advantageous to acknowledge this for the good of everyone - even the
privileged. The irony is that, out of a selfish motive, we need to be
altruistic! Adam Smith, the philosophical brain behind capitalism and author of
The Wealth of Nations was wrong
about individual ambition uplifting everyone else. It does not; it just divides
us, and causes more inequality through competition. If you have read his book
all the way to the end, you will know he also introduces a caveat that
unregulated capitalism will reduce humans into cogs that drive the machine.
John Nash, the mathematician depicted in A
Beautiful Mind, proposed the idea that Game Theory should be applied to our
political and economic choices since our own choices impact and are impacted by
the choices of others. This means that the evolutionary stable strategy of how
we deal with each other should be influenced more by cooperation and altruism
than by selfish or individual choices. Our focus on materialistic aspirations,
driven by our consumer culture, is actually making us more divided and unhappy.
If we applied Game Theory on an international level, our interactions would not
be based on selfish, nationalist motives. Racism would be the first casualty of
such a shift in our political strategy, since the spectre of the ‘other’ would
not be such a necessary illusion to maintain. Cooperation on an international
level can be augmented by the technology we have already developed.
On a side-note,
why can’t direct democracy be used on a larger scale? Encrypted block-chain
technology is already used in the financial system to secure funds and record
each transaction on a decentralized distributed ledger: a great model for how
political power could be distributed.
The same encryption we use to protect our most valuable assets, in every
bank in the country, could be used to give everyone the ability to vote from
home. Would more people making decisions about their own lives result in
anarchy? Some politicians say it is a ridiculous idea. It would mean a loss in
centralized power and control; it’s scary losing power and dividing it among
the masses. I’m not talking about state control, but actual people power. I am
advocating for something between representative democracy and direct
democracy. There are already examples of it working in US states like New
England and countries like Switzerland. Fear that we might actually be capable
of running the show in a more egalitarian way just keeps us from realizing this
dream. Instead, we trust the same old structures of patriarchal power: the
hierarchies that only want to maintain their power and the status quo for as
long as possible for their own self-interest. Yes - the military-industrial
complex that old Ike (President Dwight D.Eisenhower) warned us about back in
‘61. We are at a fork in the road, and must ask, “Where do we go from here?’”
All over the
world identity politics seems to be leading the division between people. As more right-wing populist governments
emerge, the situation seems reminiscent of the global fault lines before the
Second World War. Identity politics are indeed complex but one cannot ignore
the racial dimension that seems to be a common theme in every country affected
by them. We live in the internet age, which should have heralded a new era of information
and knowledge that should allow us to make more informed choices. Instead the
internet has also served as an insulating bubble; it keeps people separated in
enclaves of their own group interests, or media echo-chambers of their own worldview,
and they cannot see the bigger picture. Racism and online racial abuse have
flourished through this poorly-regulated medium of social interaction. YouTube,
Twitter, Facebook and other social media have paradoxically served to isolate
us more rather than bring us together. The algorithms that ensure the content
in your feed is always relevant have no ethical dimension and feed us with
content that plays on our fears and anxieties, regardless of whether the
material has been verified or not. Simultaneously, the debate on free speech
and political correctness has become mired in the swamp of political thought
control. Part of the problem is that there is no consistent framework that
works for the good of all, so content remains unregulated and so does cognitive
dissonance.
In Orwell’s
dystopian 1984 the ruling party
declared that 2+2=5. Control over physical reality was unimportant as long as
people believed it is true. Numerical constructs just represent abstract ideas
anyway, so 2+2=4 exists only in the mind, and if the mind can be controlled
then sure, 2+2 can equal 5. This was originally created by Orwell as an
argument against the Nazi anti-intellectual propaganda that denied any such
thing as the truth exists. All truth was supposed to be subjective, including
science and fact. We know from history where the slippery slope from denying
humanity to people leads, so we should all be very wary of the application of
alternative facts. This is one of the clear and present dangers that social
media has unleashed on our political consciousness, but there are many others
too.
In 2017, The
Economist published a report about how all these forms of social media have
lead to a deterioration in our mental health, contributing to increased anxiety
and depression. During the lockdowns due to Covid, there has been an even
greater usage of social media, with a corresponding increase in mental health
crises of every variety. Wild conspiracy theories abound as socially-deprived
and vulnerable people seek catharsis through blame and extreme patriotism.
Racist tweets and posts have contributed to stirring up even more division, and
gun sales in the US shot through the roof!
Gun Violence Credit: Amnesty International
My good friend
Steve, “a simple farmer’s son,” tells me, “We are all human; that is the common
denominator between all of us, and therefore that’s all we need to know about
how to behave towards each other.” Our cultures are learned behaviours, but
that is the point: we can carry on the learning process and learn to live
together with one another, and celebrate our diversity. A recognition of
equality enshrined in the Declaration of Human Rights was the first step in the
right direction. In the classroom and at home, our children learn about
themselves and the other cultures they meet. Children are naturally not born
racist; they learn how to treat other people of colour through watching their
parents’ interactions and hearing what they think about them. If their parents
have a diverse group of friends, it is likely that their children will also share
this worldview. Many studies have shown
that children are highly emotionally intelligent and pick up both implicit and
explicit biases of their parents. In 1968, an Iowa school teacher, Jane Elliot,
decided to discuss discrimination, racism and prejudice with her 3rd
Grade class. Since she felt most of the children did not interact with
minorities, she began a ‘Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes’ two-day exercise and divided her
class based on their eye colour. One group was given preferential treatment and
treated as superior on one day, and then the next day the situation was
reversed. The results of this simple experiment were so profound that even 16 years later,
many of the children who were now adults said they had a life-changing
experience. An award winning documentary was made about this, called A Class
Divided. Elliot is now regarded as being the forerunner of the diversity
training that is now used worldwide in just about every major company. These
companies see the benefit of diversity training in both cohesion of their
employee teams and warding off legal action and negative publicity. Elliot
said,"If
you can't think of any other reason for getting rid of racism, think of it as a
real money saver."
As racism is a
learnt behaviour, can animals they be racist? While living in London, a
Jamaican-British friend who had invited me over for lunch at his house warned
me that his neighbour had a racist dog. He said the dog would only bark
aggressively at him and other Black or brown people; it seemed to ignore white
people who passed by. I asked him facetiously if he thought the dog was racist.
He told me that of course he didn’t think the dog itself was racist, but he was
quite sure that the owner was. He’d had a number of negative interactions with
him, and showed me a huge BNP poster proudly displayed in the owner’s front
window. He reckoned the dog was just responding to his owner’s anxiety and
emotional response around Black people, and was just following the direction of
the ‘pack leader’. The 'Dog Whisperer', Cesar Millan would probably agree.
Credit:
Patrick Noonan
We all have the
capacity to recognize our own prejudices, question them, and choose a different
pattern of interaction if we really want to. Heuristics - mental shortcuts -
are a natural part of our thinking. We use reference points based on our own
individual experiences, and the experiences of others, to make decisions every
day. Many assumptions, generalizations and stereotypes are part of our own
heuristic process. Over time, they solidify and our thought processes become
hard-wired; as we stop questioning ourselves, which takes time and effort,
inertia is much easier. As we get older and more entrenched in our views, and
more cynical about the world, it does get much more difficult to change our
opinions. If we are fortunate enough to travel, and are open to the experience
we learn from different people in their countries, we can understand that we
can find the good, bad and everything in between wherever we go in the world,
regardless of race or religion - including in the town where we live. Indeed, as
a wise man told me, “Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.” We need a
positive view of humanity, rather than a sceptical, pessimistic view that
insulates us from ever striving for anything different. If we were all more
tolerant and respectful of each other’s differences, and committed to building
bridges between people rather than walls, we could achieve this. A philosophy
professor in London told me that true sceptics are actually hard to find. Most
of them, he said, are merely dogmatists in disguise. Most have opinions that
they adhere to, since we all have a tendency to follow ideas that confirm our
existing worldview regardless of any objective truth. They would never seek
this objective truth, because they are not really sceptics at all. A true
sceptic or cynic would have to question their own scepticism!
Cooperation is
what made us successful as a species, not selfishness. Richard Dawkin’s book The Selfish Gene reinforces the argument
of ‘survival of the fittest’ and in a revolutionary way reduces all of our
behaviours to the simple intention of propagating our genes. Thus we should not
be ashamed of our materialistic individual ambitions: it is in our nature, he
argues. It fits very neatly with Adam Smith’s individual ambition, which is why
I believe it has been so successful as a ‘meme’. The meme was another gift from
Dawkins. An Orwellian mechanism for newspeak to propagate itself: perfect for
the internet age, and “double plus good”. Cooperation is what allowed
hunter-gatherer societies to develop; the ability to hunt, organize, protect
and invent new technologies all relied on it. According to some of the latest
research in the journal Nature,
cooperation is being re-evaluated, not just as part of our evolutionary journey
but as a stable strategy for our collective future. A case for a comparative
economic approach has already been made. Now it’s just up to some brave and
bright economists to challenge the existing order and construct a framework
based around cooperation that would work on a global scale.
There is a
small group of Islands off the Eastern tip of Papua New Guinea called the
Trobriand Islands. In the early 20th century, Methodist missionaries
had taught the local population the very controlled and rule-based game of
cricket. The islanders initially played the game as it was taught; a group of
anthropologists who went to study them 70 years later found they had changed
the game into something quite different! The game still included the basic
elements, such as batting, bowling and fielding, but instead of having 11
people on each side, everyone got to play, and the game was more of a show than
a competition. They used the game as an opportunity to celebrate their culture,
including dancing, chanting, war magic, and basically putting on a fine
display. It’s a great ethnographic example of the subversion of rules and
cultural creativity, turning a competitive sport into a cooperative pageant. It
was titled, “An ingenious response to colonialism”, as the people changed the
rules of the game to suit their own values. It also serves to remind us of the
intrinsic human quality of adaptation and transformation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCd-K0Du5dI
Our human
history has been one of constant migration over thousands of years, from Africa
to every inhabitable country and environment; from the hot sandy dunes of the
Sahara to the freezing wilderness of the Arctic. We are an adaptable species
that can and has lived everywhere. Our adaptations are what created the concept
of race in the first place. As part of our own evolution, we also need to adapt
to the global reality we live in. If we do not, it will be MAD (Mutually
Assured Destruction). The choice is simple: evolve and accept that we are one
human family, and restructure our economies and governments to deal with this
reality, or become extinct. The patriotic nationalism of man-made borders make
no sense to me. After living in Canada and then the US, I realized that the ideas
many Canadians had of Americans being so different were simply untrue. They
shared a lot more with each other than either side would really care to admit.
Sure, the political systems were very different, as were some of their laws and
cultural influences, but it was not a stretch to see that a Canadian living in
Vancouver, for example, did not have a vastly different life than one living in
Seattle in the US. They had similar houses and infrastructure, the geography
was the same, their popular culture was almost identical. In fact they would
have more in common with each other than Americans who live in different states
such as Mississippi and New York! I believe we could extend this argument to
other countries, and even cross-culturally.
The vista of
the mental landscape of how we look at the world around us undeniably varies a
little from culture to culture, and country to country, but the fundamentals
that make us all human are ultimately the same. It is really our own mindset
that creates the ‘difference’.
There is a
great moment in the film La Haine
about the turbulent life of three friends, who are all minorities living in the
projects near Paris. At one point, they pass a billboard that has a picture of
the Earth, and under it a caption, “Le Monde est a vous” – The World is Yours.
One of the protagonists, Saeed, takes out his spray can and changes it,
subverting the message in a glorious act of culture-jamming!
La Haine Credit: Cinephile.ca
I do not believe the majority of humans are
inherently racist. We are a gregarious species, but we can be greatly influenced
by prejudice, which in my opinion is mostly born out of a combination of experience,
ignorance and fear. This can be used to foment division and manipulate the
masses as much of our history can attest to. Being open and optimistic requires
a degree of vulnerability. If we accept there are things we don’t know, it can make
us feel uncomfortable and adding negative experience into the mix, then turns
optimism into pessimism. It is much easier to follow the herd mentality,
triggered by dog-whistle politics to fear and exclude the ‘other’. Nonetheless,
it is inevitable that despite the numerous attempts at division, over hundreds
and thousands of years we will continue to migrate and intermix until our gene
pool is so heterogeneous that it will no longer matter. The concept of the
nation state, defined by its human and land boundaries, will probably be
revisited as part of this long-term cultural evolution.
I believe that
one day it will be as absurd as it was to the indigenous people of this country
that humans can really own land: we are merely its custodians for the short
time we are on this planet. The next time I need to negotiate our mortgage at
the bank, I’m going to try this approach!
One of my
favourite places to visit in the East End of London is Brick Lane. The Ska band
Madness sang about the area in their masterpiece ‘The Liberty of Norton Folgate’. In the song, they take us on a tour of the area and
its people, acknowledging how “in the beginning was a fear of the immigrant”.
It used to be called Whitechapel Lane, but was renamed when the local earth was
used to make bricks when brick and tile-makers set up shop there in the 15th
century. Brick Lane has had a turbulent history as one of the slum areas of
London; there was a constant stream of immigrants from all over the world
looking for a better life, due to its proximity to the docklands of the Thames.
Jack the Ripper prowled this
impoverished area looking for his next victim in the late 19th
century. Nowadays it’s a vibrant area full of street art and culture, markets,
stores and curry houses.
There is a very
special building here that personifies the character of the place, originally
built in 1743 as a church for French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution after the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. The Protestant Huguenots had been protected by the
Edict in mainly Catholic France after the religious fighting between the two
sides had lead to an estimated three million deaths. After almost 90 years of
relative peace, Louis XIV declared Protestantism illegal and subsequently many
of the Huguenots fled to escape torture and persecution. They settled in this
area of Brick lane and built the church here as the centre of their community.
Eventually the Huguenots moved west into areas like Kensington and Chelsea, and
the next wave of immigrants moved in: Ashkenazi Jews fleeing the pogroms of
Eastern Europe during the 19th Century. The same building soon
became the centre of worship for the Jewish community: the ‘Great Synagogue.’
This same community stood against Oswald Mosley and his British Union of
Fascists in the Battle of Cable Street.
An estimated five thousand fascist ‘Blackshirts’ tried to march through Cable
Street to Whitechapel in October of 1936 and they were met by an estimated 20
thousand anti-fascist demonstrators including Anarchist, Communist, Jewish and
Socialist groups. Mosley had to abandon the march after a series of battles
between the demonstrators and police. Sticks, stones, chair legs, rotten
vegetables, rubbish and contents of chamber pots were all used as improvised
weapons to repel the police and the fascists.
By the 20th
century a lot of that Jewish community had moved away, and was replaced by new
immigrants from Bangladesh. After the end of British colonial rule, India had
been divided (or partitioned as they like to call it) into two dominions, India
and Pakistan. Pakistan was itself further separated into East and West Pakistan,
with India in-between! Naturally, this odd arrangement did not last long as no
country could survive being split into two halves 2,200km apart, and the
eventual war between the two resulted in the creation of the new state of
Bangladesh, and of course the accompanying refugees and migrants. Many of these
settled in the same area as their 17th century sailor forebears had,
and the East-End ‘curry capital’ of
Banglatown was born. The same building is now a mosque, and next to it is the
Altab Ali park, named after a young Bengali man murdered in a racist attack.
Poignantly,
high above the entrances of the mosque on a sundial, still inscribed in Latin
nearly 300 years later, are the words Umbra
Sumus: ‘We are shadows’.
This building
stands as a bricks and mortar testament to the connection between all the
people who used it as the centre of their communities over the past few hundred
years. The building and its different communities reminds me of the thought
experiment in philosophy known as ‘the ship of Theseus’. The question is
whether an object that has all its components replaced is still the same
object. It was introduced in an essay by Plutarch as Theseus’s ship that
returned from a great battle in Crete, and was preserved by the Athenians by
replacing structural parts and rotten planks with new timber as and when
required. Eventually the whole ship was made up of new parts, and the question
arose whether it was still the same ship. I wonder if this building that was
originally a church, then a synagogue and then eventually a mosque, could be
play the same role as Theseus’s ship, about our identity as a people.
Successive
waves of migration, displacement, and intermixing have transformed the genetic
and cultural identity of people all over the world, so it is not absurd to
posit that perhaps the way we look at people, culture and race should also be
re-evaluated. In the meantime, while we wait to be outraged by the next
race-related event on the news, before the news cycle changes again, I
obviously have my own opinion of what could be done.
Logically,
emotionally, spiritually and scientifically I cannot accept that any one group,
race, class or religion is any better or worse than any other. We are all
fundamentally the same in that we all want the same things in life. We may have
been hard-wired from our tribal origins to favor our own groups but the
wonderful thing about the gift of having a larger neo-cortex than our ancestors
is the ability to reason and think. This innate ability can help us to separate
historical negative experiences and erroneous conclusions to create a more
optimistic view of our future and the amazing possibilities that lie before us
through cooperation. There will always be malcontents who foster division for
their own nefarious purposes and egos, but that should not prevent us from
being courageous enough to strive for something better for all of us.
Therefore, I
suggest adopting a more International and diverse mindset or worldview: our common
interests and cooperation are of far greater importance than our short-term
disputes. Perhaps we could also all be more open and kinder to the people
around us and the services we use every day. Rather than seeing the interaction
as a means to an end, instead we can use the opportunity to build rapport.
Showing basic consideration for everyone we interact with, regardless of
socioeconomic background, will help to ‘level’ our society. Sure, it may sound
a little ‘Disney’ at first, but in an increasingly polarized society it is not
such a radical suggestion to share a few words beyond a ‘hello’ with our
neighbours, or to have a simple conversation with a stranger, particularly if
they are from a different background, race or religion. Perhaps that grassroots
habit will generate empathy, and who knows? It could be as infectious as a
pandemic, extending to all members of our communities, transcending the
boundaries of race and culture. Sounds implausible? In our modern social-media
driven culture, it should be blatantly obvious that we actually strive for this
connection and validation by others in our perceived ‘groups’. So why could it
not happen in the real world as well?
The cynics
among us will say that this will never happen, because we will always have conflict,
that’s what humans have always done. But the truth is the naysayers don’t even
want to try. They have convinced themselves that they understand human nature.
It is a rather pessimistic approach that shares a view of our purpose and of
life as bleak as Shakespeare’s Macbeth
lamenting about “…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and
signifying nothing”.
I prefer Gene
Rodenberry’s visionary approach. He believed in humanity’s evolution and
transformation through an eventual conflict resolution into a more mature
species that would ultimately embrace its diversity. He thought of our species
as being in the ‘child’ stage, that wants to get what it wants regardless of
the consequences. He believed that someday we will grow out of it, and that is
the final frontier we need to traverse to reach for the stars.
In 1953, Albert
Einstein wrote in his essay to Leo Baeck, “Few people are capable of expressing with
equanimity opinions that
differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even
incapable of forming such opinions.” Einstein, as brilliant as he was, was not noted for
his social commentary. Yet these words reflect a very profound idea. We are
somewhat beholden to the ideas of what our close friends and family think and say. We mutually confirm each other's proclivities and influences in thought and behaviour. In this way, our social environment shapes our worldview and our prejudices. However, we
can free ourselves of some of those biases by being more inclusive to those who would
otherwise be outside our social circle. If there is also a sense of purpose
in our social connections beyond our comfort, we can change this. If we make connections with people who are not like us and do not look the same as us, we can enhance our social and cultural understanding.
A commitment to personal edification,
including community-building and learning through the experiences of others,
will facilitate the development of structural changes in our society. This is
necessary to change the systemic racism that affects education, jobs, housing
and so on. I believe a ground-up approach will lay a strong foundation we can
then build on, as everything starts at the level of the individual. Genuine
connection with others is a powerful healing force that validates a fundamental
truth: we really are all in this together. The only reason we do not have unity
is because of our ignorance of each other. So in the spirit of the Troiband
Islanders, if we strengthen our values of cooperation through camaraderie, and
embrace our differences rather than just tolerate them, we can play by new
rules. This is a race we can all win.