The New Public Values, Post-Capitalism
No Smoking! LBGT+! #MeToo! Black Lives Matter!—The “Public Interest”—The Next New Public Value?
There is a growing list of major perspective and value changes in American society over recent times. They include the no-smoking movement, sexual and gender orientation liberation, #MeToo, and the rapidly developing Black Lives Matter movement.
All of these movements involve new ways of seeing and thinking about social issues. The new ways of seeing and thinking bring to bear perspectives unrecognized, unacknowledged, or just repressed by dominant social groups. These perspectives have embedded values about identities, fairness, and human rights.
Each of the new perspectives has logical structures which imply major changes in the legitimacy of new identities, legal rights, beliefs, and attitudes towards previously subordinated social groups. Instead of smokers, for example, having the upper hand against non-smokers freely polluting, dirtying, annoying and endangering everyone else, non-smokers have flipped the social status so that smokers now accommodate to them. Now, the consequences of smoking affect only smokers themselves.
Similarly, the centuries-old binary conception of sexual normality as male/female heterosexuality has been upended by modern conceptions (based upon science, social experience, and moral elements) of multiple and different orientations in sexuality and in gender fluidity. Now, a range of sexual and gender identities is being acknowledged and legitimized.
The #MeToo movement has successfully overturned a dominant set of patriarchal social structures so that the "female" perspective is now being acknowledged and legitimized. The BLM movement may be progressing towards a similar effect regarding race issues.
To say that these movements have flipped the predominant social structures which inhibited them in the past is not to say that the negative elements of the previous structures have been eliminated entirely. It means that a predominant group, or set of groups (i.e., a large majority of mostly sane people), has drastically reoriented its view and attitude towards these previously subordinated groups. That reorientation has implied major changes in legal rights, social attitudes, and the practical every day life experiences of millions of Americans.
Significantly, all of these social perspective “flips" overturned powerful predominant social frames primarily by mere new ways of seeing and thinking. There have been no major changes in objective or material conditions. There has been no significant changes in the economy, in business, in human biology, or any other objective elements. In essence, reoriented subjective reality – the mere seeing and thinking – altered how the general society sees and thinks about previously subordinated social groups (legitimizing legal, moral, and behavioral changes.)
The reorientations came about from a mix of scientific data and evidence, factual experience, intellectual theory, expression of beliefs and attitude, combined with public sphere political activity including lobbying, protests, and other means of influence.
Look at these effects: smoke-free business and public environments; equal rights, equal status, acceptance, and inclusivity for LGBT+, women, and black Americans (among a predominant social group.) All of this from the application to social issues of new mental constructs! (We could say that American society appears to be starting to get smarter and wiser? Maybe. And, if so, it's about time that our 18-Century principles, structures, and process of governance and social relations become subject to high-level reconsideration.—This topic will be the subject of an upcoming blog post here.)
Which leads to what could and should be the next major reorientation – the capitalist and individualist culture which is the dominant social/political structure in society. This culture is embedded in an 18th-Century paradigm which conditions nearly everything in our lives including our work, consumer and family relations, and the nature of the communities we live in. It determines our political, economic, and social outcomes and ultimately our happiness levels. It has created a dominant elite class and the most extreme forms of income and capital inequality in a major world economy. This, in the World's Greatest Nation?
While capitalist and individualist principles might have made sense in the 18th-Century America where the society was made up mostly of small communities; most families worked alone, on farms, or otherwise were self-sustaining; and there was little interaction with other citizens, as most economic and social activity was local. There was little need to live or work together, little need (or even means) to commingle with anyone outside of the local community, and few things to regulate, by any government. There was little in common and not much to be called the "public interest."
Nearly all of that has changed in the past 230 years. We now have most citizens living closely in large cities, global economic and financial systems, way more diversity, and the Internet connecting nearly everyone and everything. Nearly every major component of society has changed except for how we govern ourselves and relate socially.
The divergence of the objective basis for early political economic theory and our present global reality is vast. The consequences of this divergence includes way obsolete and dysfunctional political institutions and processes. We still rely on creaky old principles of governance and social relations severely incapable of managing a more populated, concentrated, interconnected, and diverse set of people and organizations. The worst consequence of the capitalist and individualist ethos is the inevitable formation of a political-economic elite unfairly dominating everyone else in the economic and political spheres. The capitalist/individualist system has enabled the perpetual exploitation of workers and consumers, the corruption of government, and the deadly despoiling of the physical world we live in. This ethos permanently condemns most people to lives of insecurity and fear.
Due to the internal logic of this ethos it is inevitable that the most selfish, most competitive, and most willful people "win" in the forced competition among citizens. Hence, The "elite." They can be called “Private" citizens, highlighting their intense focus on private interest.
This elite has justified its actions and positions by resort to a set of "rules of the game" – i. e., focused self interest and will to compete— mandating a small set of "winners" and a huge population of losers. There is little concept of public interest in this scheme. The elite’s justification for even the most vile behaviors and attitudes is "Business Is Business" and "Every Man for Himself.” They have intensely exploited those rules and have won, even though there are alternative “rules” and principles which can and should be on an equal or superior status to the prevailing ethos. They include a sense of the public interest and collective fairness. They also include a balance of private and public interests, meaningful life focus beyond mere production and consumption, and respect for the humanity of all, even for the "losers" in the economic competition. We can call those maintaining these public values as “Public” citizens.
Notice that the dichotomy here is private versus public citizen. It is not the rich versus the poor. The latter is a crude and invalid way to conceive of the population groups. Progressives need to address the correct elements of this issue and address remedies accordingly. (See an elaboration of this point in The Action Manual—www.theactionmanual.com.) It would be unfair, for example, the vilify some rich guys like Warren Buffett and others who appear to have earned their wealth honestly and without acting against the public interest. The correct targets are those who showed that they are purely self-interested like the Wall Street fat cats who secured bailouts during the Great Recession and those well-to-do others who obscenely grabbed governmental subsidies during the Covid-19 crisis while truly needy small businesses were left with little.
There has been increasing resentment among a lot of Americans about increasing income and wealth disparities, the lies about equal opportunities, and the delusion of the American Dream. For too long the common people have realized (at least emotionally) that they are being exploited but have had no effective response. The gross and continued exploitation of most of us by Big Business and a social/political elite including their sly nonstop pilfering of public treasuries is fueling new interest in alternative structures and ideas, including progressive policies and socialist ideas.
The non-smoking and other movements noted above seem to model, in ways, an exciting new approach to challenging the dominance of capitalism and individualism in our society. We can "flip" frame of capitalist/individualist by promoting a new social structure – the primacy of the public citizen over the private citizen. The private citizen will be shunned and shamed, made targets of protests and boycotts, and subjected to the organic resistance means common to the prior movements.
The dominance of the pure self-interested, willful, and competitive attitude will be flipped in favor of those who maintain a balancing of private interest with a sense of public interest and fairness, meaningfulness of life-work balance, and respect for all humanity, particularly those making the most of whatever abilities they have – that is, living the Small Life well.
In practical terms, that means:
1. Insisting that Big Business operate with all stakeholders in mind – investors, workers, communities, governments, and the planet.
2. Employers recognize the humanity of workers by providing good pay, reasonable leaves and work conditions, and dignity. The financial world would refocus from your self interest to a balancing of private and public interests.
3. Special interests become shunned as civic entities. It will be general interests which are encouraged and incentivized.
4. Governments become forced to insulate themselves from the influence of special interests and conflicts of interest.
This cultural change should eventually extend into a larger, more comprehensive Smartness of society. (See The Action Manual, noted above.)
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