Shock, Fear, and Despair--or a Wake-Up Call?

Many people are still in shock, fear, and even despair after the 2016 US election. It is easy to give in to these feelings. Certainly if we recognize all that is at stake, a period of grieving is needed. In the endless dissections of ‘what went wrong’ that are occurring, we must not overlook the possibility that there is opportunity in such a crisis. The election tells us that something is badly wrong in our system—and many people seem to have voted out of that sense of shock, fear, and despair. A good part of what is wrong, though certainly not all given the nation’s storied history of civil rights and other abuses, can be laid at the feet of today’s economics. People are lashing out against the impacts of neoliberalism and the political structures that support it. Here is where potential opportunity exists.

Neoliberalism. We in the US generally know it through neoclassical economic theories that dominate US economic and business cultures and textbooks, and have spread increasingly around the globe. We know it particularly in the memes and values that describe economies and business practices. You know the drill: companies should maximize shareholder wealth. Markets and trade are ‘free’ government should, as former President Ronald Reagan said be kept ‘off our backs.’ Globalization and growth at all costs in company profits and GNP are desirable. Individual responsibility and self-interest characterize humans. Competition is cutthroat and society relies on private goods and property. Financial wealth is the goal. Materialism and consumption are good things because they keep the economy going.

Such are the values promoted by what we know as neoclassical economics, which is underpinned by the neoliberal agenda. We all know and resonate with these phrases. So embedded in our thinking are they that we can hardly imagine an economy, never mind a society, that places value on other things. Yet alternatives are possible. The divisive election built on the fear and, yes, despair of too many of the US populace, who have suffered negative impacts that neoliberalism’s memes and policies have reaped. In the wake of the election results, it is clear that change is necessary. Viewed as positively as possible, the election is nothing less than a wake-up call.

It is now up to people with a different mindset to articulate a new vision of how our world works. Then we need to work together to implement that vision and make it real in peoples’ lives. In short, we need to recognize the power that neoliberalism’s narrative has had. Then we need to construct an equally compelling but decidedly different story about how we as humans relate to the world around us. In light of major systemic problems of job creation, outsourcing, climate change, sustainability crises, poor education, and growing inequality, we need in particular to redefine how and why our businesses operate, what their core purposes are. Progressives need to be as deliberate, yes, deliberate as the promulgators of the neoliberal agenda have been in spreading that new narrative, in building policies around it, and in ensuring that it holds.

The current neoliberal agenda ignores globalization’s problematic impacts, climate change, inequality, technological reasons for lack of good jobs and a shrinking middle class, and sustainability crises. Fostering ever-greater materialism in a world of diminishing jobs and economic opportunity, where most economic gains go to the already wealthy, it overlooks the reality that endless growth is simply impossible in a finite world. It ignores people need dignity and decent work to make ends meet and, perhaps equally importantly, make their lives meaningful. It is these realities that have fostered the fear, pain, and despair that seems to have characterized the decision of many voters, who were willing to overlook many deplorable things to vote for change. And resulted in an election that generates similar fear, pain, and despair among many others.

As progressives struggle to cope, they face a crucial task: creating and even more daunting agreeing upon a coherent, compelling, convincing new narrative. This new narrative needs to explicitly explain what progressives stand for and the vision they will fight for. Consider values of dignity and wellbeing. How about building economic, political, and social equity, or living and working in harmony with (not dominion over) nature?

Consider that fair markets invariably actually depend on the ability of governments to make them work. Consider that we humans are social creatures and live in communities. Consider that we have shared responsibility for the wellbeing of our fellow human beings, no matter what their race, creed, or ethnicity. Not to mention the wellbeing of other living beings and the ecosystems that support all, us included. Consider that nature, biologists and ecologists tell us, operates on principles of symbiosis and collaboration, not just competition. So do our companies, societies, communities, families, and other institutions. Consider there that there are many forms of ‘capital’ beyond financial and economic that matter to most people. For instance, social and relational, natural, spiritual, intellectual, and human capital.

Rather than despairing about regressive policies that now seem inevitable, it is time for people who care about our shared future to come together to develop a new narrative about our economies and societies and our very human place in the world. This new narrative needs to place the human enterprise (and its enterprises) in harmony with nature, articulate goals and values that offer dignity and wellbeing for all. It needs to include the opportunity for purposeful employment and meaningful connections. It potentially provides the underpinnings for a new progressive movement that could and, arguably needs to, brings new life to and broadens the appeal of progressive values that encompass and go beyond neoliberalism’s dominant values of freedom without responsibility for consequences, financial wealth above all else, and individual without shared responsibility.

We need, in short, to change our story and its associated memes, to one of wellbeing, dignity, and an economy in service to life. Then we need to work hard to make that story real for the many disaffected people who have suffered at the hand of neoliberalism. We need a story of stewardship of planetary resources, of dignity and wellbeing for other humans, not to mention other creatures and nature’s manifestations. We need to develop a story that places our economies in service to life, dignity, and wellbeing for all. We need to agree on such a new story—and then work together to make it a reality?