Towards the end of 2019 I enjoyed four seemingly unrelated conversations with friends who share some of my concerns about the shaping of the world to come[i]. Their fields of expertise are quite different from mine as are their preferences for how that world might look or be brought about. Each was contemplating in some way how a radical and wide-reaching shift in the understanding of justice and wellbeing was achieved in Aotearoa from the 1980s, what might have been lost, and what might yet be (re)created. I was reminded of a statement by a ‘systems improvement consultant’ about the normalization of the ‘new order’ being imposed on the public at that time. With targeted training, incentives and threats he asserted
the asylum can be turned over to the inmates[ii]
Indeed, from the mid-1980s, corrosive cost-cutting characterized the housekeeping of public, market, and community organizations the capitalist world over. ‘The Global Economy’ demanded it. ‘The Market’ would deliver it. A narrowly focused ‘business-model-for-everything’[iii] was promulgated. We complied. We competed against each other increasingly ruthlessly to keep our feet in the door of a fracturing house[iv]. Inequality exacerbated. Neoliberal values were naturalized to the point of nigh invisibility.
In the global imposition of neoliberalism, I think again of the calculating biding-of-time by the Mont Pèlerin Society to make their move globally[v], and the quip in 1986 attributed to Roger Douglas (NZ’s Minister of Finance): “in 25 years-time, most New Zealanders won’t be able to afford to live here”[vi]. Shame on them.
And so it came to be. Not only housing is now in crisis.
Later in my career, I had an opportunity to craft a paper contemplating the ways neoliberally informed systems exacerbate suffering and permit avoidable deaths[vii]. It focused not only on the architects and functionaries of neoliberalism, but also on the passive acceptance of this regime by so many of us. Shame on us.
The idea that neoliberalism is a corrosive doctrine is no longer so radical. Its recent recanting in our nation provides a glimmer of optimism in this regard [viii]. But our House is still in dangerous disarray. In his attempt to focus the world on the entangled threats of rising inequality and climate change, the Pope uses the term Home as a metaphor for our place on the Planet[ix]. I encourage him to think of a less Patriarchal Home than The Church still envisions.
In intending to contribute to a different script for the future invites thoughtful conversation with the home-making scholars in my circle of peers. I doff my Bonnet to Marilyn for her inspiration[x], to Kahu[xi] and many others for exploring such thoughts in more recent years.
Cracking the pervasive domesticating code of Economy-in-Command and the cloaked actions of its Crown Prince (The Market) is difficult work. There are many courageous people however, taking responsibility for transforming the systems designed to guide our lives. I see their efforts in my daily life and in the rich ether the internet provides along with its emissions[xii] and omissions[xiii]. I think of the recent victory in the challenge to one of the myriads of supply chains that provide my life with its privileges and confrontations [xiv]. I see also that $1 cans of Italian tomatoes are still on the supermarket shelves (UMN7).
Thoughts about our Common Home entangled with the very happy times of the Festive Season in my home with all its busy-ness included a laugh-aloud pantomime written and produced by two granddaughters each undertaking several characters[xv]. They remind me of the wit, insightfulness, and energy of youth. ‘The Prince’ was not to be taken seriously. His sense of entitlement was denied!
Very funny! Very hopeful! For their ponderous grandmother, a reminder: there are always cracks to be found in any hegemonic control for a revolutionary guiding light to shine through. Cracking the entitlement code of The Prince with wit and humor! Priceless! Go Girls! Could we strip The Prince of his economy-serving costumes? He and his servants (most of us able to read this UMN – a tiny but privileged group of his subjects) might be laid bare.
The wit of my granddaughters, the courage of so many thought-leaders, the steadfastness of those who work in so many fields, random conversations about anticipation in the creative enterprise that is our humanity – and for some, the divine in the human – will motivate my reflections on what may come under my nose in the year ahead.
I refuse to think of our Common Home as an Asylum turned over to its inmates by a grasping cabal or gripping algorithm. I aspire to use UMN to add my part to the audacious, courageous, whimsical and creative efforts of so many others by taking up some of what I find under my nose to examine the constitution of its constitution.
References:
[i] Doffing my Bonnet to Professor David Boje – UMN19 will explain.
[ii] Humphries-Kil, M.T. (1995 – page 346). ‘The Management of Quality’: NZ joins a global discourse for controlling workers. PhD Thesis University of Waikato.
[iii] Humphries-Kil, M.T. (2019). A [Business] Model for World Development. In SAGE Business Cases. London, UK: Sage.
[iv] The English term 'Economics' is derived from the Greek word 'Oikonomia'. Its meaning is 'household management'. Economics was first read in ancient Greece. Aristotle, the Greek Philosopher termed Economics as a science of 'household management'. https://wikieducator.org/Economics_Definition
[v] A good related book is The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674033184. A little Google search will show the Mont Pèlerin Society is planning to be very active in 2020.
[vi]https://snoopman.net.nz/2017/09/22/in-a-land-of-brain-washed-kiwis-part-4-why-labours-three-sacred-cows-are-nationals-elephantine-room-mates/
[vii] Humphries, M.T. (2007). Denial and the Dance of Death. 23rd EGOS Colloquium Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien. Beyond the Waltz - Dances of Individuals and Organization. Stream: Genocide, Individuals, and Organisations. Choices, actions and consequences for contemporary contexts. Vienna.
[viii] Jacinda Ardern, Jim Bolger, Bryan Guold are examples. The refrain is being taken up by ready-to-reinterpret-the-the-world-specialists and a relatively absorbent population – while ‘free trade’ and ‘economic growth’ remain the main-line gospel.
[ix]http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
[x]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/31/new-year-honours-marilyn-waring-who-inspired-a-teenage-ardern-made-a-dame
[xi] Dey, K.J. & Humphries, M.T. (2013) Heimat - the place we are from or towards: Mother Earth as the Hearth and Home(land) of all life. Paper presented at the Sustainability Conference 2013 “Sustainability Rhetoric: Facts and Fictions”, Massey University, Auckland New Zealand, November.
[xii]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/17/internet-climate-carbon-footprint-data-centres
[xiii] The vexed issues the ways my screens fill with system-selected content at times overwhelming my brain space – and still we do not know what we do not know…. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/24/781598549/greenland-is-not-for-sale-but-it-has-the-rare-earth-minerals-america-wants
[xiv]https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bvg8n8/first-lawsuit-of-its-kind-accuses-big-tech-of-profiting-from-child-labor-in-cobalt-mines[xv] Eva and Lucy: Prince Not So Charming and The Secret Slapper.December 24, 2019.