THE WAY TO TAME CAPITALISM

The first steps to tame the present level of capitalism (which has turned from relatively positive to extremely negative in recent decades) involves reducing our general consumption.

This will also be the most effective route to reducing the threat of oncoming climate change.

We have left it very late in the day to begin this reversal process. The engine of capitalism, until the Covid-19 pandemic was plowing ahead to ever-greater heights, mostly with the blessing of all populations (bar a few stoic souls).

With rising populations buying into the consumption culture and an already highly polluted environment in many regions the prospects for major change did not look good.

Covid-19 has brought an opportunity to reevaluate our lives and especially our buying habits. Somewhat more free from the temptations forever set before us by the mass marketers and having time and incentive to think about our lives the virus has given us the opportunity for a reset.

Multiple industries, the manufacturing processes they use, the transportation methods they use plus all the other diverse uses of energy and resources required in the entire cycle have grown exponentially in recent years. This is fed and encouraged by capitalist governments that require ever-increasing taxes from economic growth to sustain themselves by responding to demands from their populations for more of just about everything.

The present situation where ever more economic growth is required year on year irrespective of the rise in populations expected is entirely unsustainable even in the relatively short term. In the medium to long term it will be totally disastrous across many fronts from the biosphere and the melting of the ice sheets to animal and plant species to the degradation of our living environments in multiple ways.

If the capitalist elites now driving their enterprises toward ever-greater profits infinitely expand their activities and inevitably more join them as time goes by in this tiny elite of humanity the negative effects already seen will clearly grow exponentially and be seen to grow all around us.

The single most powerful act each one of us can do to offset all of the effects which now seem inevitable is simple but potentially very powerful. It is simply to reduce our consumption, to look at each purchase critically and err on the side of not buying wherever possible.

Several changes in our lifestyles could aid the above. Resist the urge to change for its own sake. Many people have become habituated to a focus on their belongings and home environment. Multiple television shows have played on this aspect of modern life. We are encouraged to change our furniture, our devices, the look of our homes and gardens, the utensils, our clothes and every aspect of all we own. In short we are encouraged to shop, to spend and to make this one of, if not the most important aspects of our lives.

I suggest we remove ourselves from this never-ending spend-fest of self-interested introspection where we create our own never-to-be-fully-satisfied mode of continual torture and that we change to a new mode of existence that is more about being, and much less about having.

Currently we see the changes to our things as a major enhancement of our personal satisfaction, of our level of contentment and thus how we feel. We associate this with being happier. Haven’t we lost sight of an earlier mode of fulfillment regarding being happy that we had in interpersonal relationships rather than in buying, owning and enjoying ‘things’?

Modern life is isolating. Lack of time means meeting others is increasingly a luxury we find difficult to afford. The demands of work and family mitigate against having the luxury of free time to spend in what could be seen as non-profitable ways. This latter view is an integral part of the problem. Since the Reagan-Thatcher period we have been encouraged to believe we live to work rather than work to live, we have insidiously been convinced to see our lives in terms almost of adherence to a business plan, of the need to sell ourselves, to present the correct face for each occasion like a public relations worker. All of this has diminished the aspects of naturalness which comprised an earlier reality of much greater and more frequently experienced association with others.

We have been herded into strict guidelines where we present ourselves as desired by those above us and strictly control our connection to others. We drop association with others out of many fears, perhaps they will take too much of our time, perhaps they could be dangerous, perhaps we will find nothing in common with them, perhaps they would cost us money we can’t afford to lose. Good reasons to isolate ourselves have emerged from the changes in the capitalist world in recent years. So we turn to things rather than people to satisfy our need for the generalized concept of ‘happiness’.

Now most things are prepackaged. Few of us grow any of our own food. We have our gardens landscaped, neutered for our pleasure, perhaps paved to a high degree so no time must be spent tending to it. We buy new rather than repair or mend. We follow fashion if we can afford to, in clothes, in decor, in cars. We join others on the property ladder if we can afford to. We are continually seeking more, encouraged never to be content by the advertisers who know exactly what they are doing in this respect, seducing us so cleverly with endlessly sophisticated and highly focused psychological temptations. In short we have become like Pavlov’s Dogs, mentally salivating at the thought of having ‘more’.

This is a cul-de-sac leading not only to increasing selfishness and isolation but also to a plethora of mental dysfunctions. The time when this ersatz existence palls and we sit unnervingly depressed for no apparent reason is an inevitability for the majority. When the few friends we have along with our loved ones begin to disappear from our lives it begins to literally hit home how much we have invested in things instead of people. We have become virtual hermits, alone, living near meaningless lives in terms of relation to others.

The answer to all this is to move in the opposite direction. Downsize, steadily buy less, and buy less into what those above want from us. Leave the cult of ‘perfect appearance’ behind, refuse to bow to current fashions.

End any slavish attitude to political correctness where you tie yourself in knots in an effort to self-censor and be what people want, be bold enough to simply be yourself and encourage others to do the same. Cauterizing our natural feelings has made us freeze and nullify our connection to others. Be as kind and as compassionate as possible... but mentally jailing ourselves can only be harmful. We can learn to evolve our views, we needn’t punish ourselves for them through inhibiting natural interaction. Then human interaction can return more fully to its natural, open form regarding our mode of expression. It becomes easier, direct, more dynamic, free of fear.

If we can fully re-engage with other humans the happiness we find in this will allow us to relinquish the need we feel to have the myriad things that we buy, use and constantly feel the need to renew as compensation.

And in so doing we can begin to tame capitalism by buying less and less and less and in so doing also give generations to come a habitable planet, sustainable in ecological terms and joyously habitable in terms of human association and interaction with priorities that are about people, not what your next purchase will be.