A Barrier to Social Justice

Extract from Robert Whitaker & Lisa Cosgrove's 'Psychiatry Under the Influence'

“As Kriss observed in his article [in which he reviews the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM) as if it were a work of fiction], the DSM locates problems within the biology of the individual. This, in turn, is an understanding that encourages society to ignore social factors that may create mental difficulties for so many.

If depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric symptoms arise from neurotransmitters that are out of whack, then society–much like the individual patient–is not prompted to consider the social context for the distress.

Perhaps the best example of this is how foster children are regularly treated today. Such children can be understood to have drawn the short straw in the lottery of life, born into a dysfunctional family situation, where abuse of many kinds may be rampant. Yet, such children today often diagnosed with a mental disorder. Society is no longer prompted to ask what happened to the child; instead, a diagnosis is made to designate what is wrong with the child. The child is informed that he or she is broken and “mentally ill.” Medication is offered as the solution, and this is so even though the medication may squelch the child's emotions and capacity to interact with the world. More disadvantages are heaped on the child, and all the while, society sees no need to create a nurturing environment for the child, one that would encourage the child to develop a new internal narrative of how he or she is capable of loving and being loved.

In this way, the disease model encourages society to turn a blind eye to the social injustices that may cause mental distress to so many. If anxiety, depression, or aggressive behaviours are due to a chemical imbalance, or a brain illness of some kind, then questions about lousy schools, poor wages, poverty, racism, and crime-filled neighbourhoods can be dismissed.

If a school doesn't set aside time for gym, art or music, and the child gets antsy sitting in a chair all day, then that is the child's fault, and not the fault of a society that would create such a child-unfriendly school day. The DSM, all too often, breeds societal hard-heartedness toward those who are suffering because of reasons related to social injustices, and mitigates the impulse for creating a more just society.”
~Robert Whitaker & Lisa Cosgrove's 'Psychiatry Under the Influence'

Kandiaronk on Law and Punishment

Excerpt from 'The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity' by David Graeber and David Wengrow

Lahontan: This is why the wicked need to be punished, and the good need to be rewarded. Otherwise, murder, robbery and defamation would spread everywhere, and, in a word, we would become the most miserable people upon the face of the earth.

Kandiaronk: For my own part, I find it hard to see how you could be much more miserable than you already are. What kind of human, what species of creature, must Europeans be, that they have to be forced to do good, and only refrain from evil because of fear of punishment?...
You have observed that we lack judges. What is the reason for that? Well, we never bring lawsuits against one another. And why do we never bring lawsuits? Well, because we made a decision neither to accept or make use of money. And why do we refuse to allow money into our communities? The reason is this: we are determined not to have laws – because, since the world was a world, our ancestors have been able to live contentedly without them.

The Other Cheek

Extract from Rutger Bregman's Humankind: A Hopeful History

“Not long ago, Julio Diaz, a young social worker, was taking the subway from work to his home in the Bronx in New York. As he did almost every day, he got off one stop early to grab a bite at his favourite diner.

But tonight wasn't like other nights. As he made his way to the restaurant from the deserted subway station, a figure jumped out from the shadows. A teenager, holding a knife. 'I just gave him my wallet,' Julio later told a journalist. Theft accomplished, the kid was about to run off when Julio did something unexpected.

'Hey, wait a minute,' he called after his mugger. 'If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.'

The boy turned back to Julio in disbelief. 'Why are you doing this?'

'If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars,' Julio replied, 'then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me...hey, you're more than welcome.'

The kid agreed, and moments later Julio and his assailant were seated at a booth in the diner. The waiters greeted them warmly. The manager stopped by for a chat. Even the dishwashers said hello.

'You know everybody here,' the kid said, surprised. 'Do you own this place?'

'No,' said Julio. 'I just eat here a lot.'

'But you're even nice to the dishwasher.'

'Well, haven't you been taught you should be nice to everybody?'

'Yeah,' the kid said, 'but I didn't think people actually behaved that way.'

When Julio and his mugger had finished eating, the bill arrived. But Julio no longer had his wallet. 'Look,' he told the kid. 'I guess you're going to have to pay for this bill because you have my money and I can't pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I'll gladly treat you.'

The kid gave him back his wallet. Julio paid the bill and then gave him $20. On one condition, he said: the teenager had to hand over his knife.

When the journalist later asked Julio why he'd treated his would-be robber to dinner, he didn't hesitate: 'I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It's as simple as it gets in this complicated world.'

When I told a friend about Julio's act of kindness, he didn't miss a beat. 'Please excuse me while I barf.'

Okay, so this story is a little saccharine. It reminded me of the cliched lessons I heard at church as a kid. Like the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:

'You have heard that it was said, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.'

Sure, you think. Swell plan, Jesus – if we were all saints. Problem is: we're all too human. And in the real world, turning the other cheek is about the most naive thing you can do, right?

Only recently did I realise Jesus was advocating a quite rational principle. Modern psychiatrists call it non-complimentary behaviour. Most of the time, as I mentioned earlier, we humans mirror each other. Someone gives you a compliment, you're quick to return the favour. Somebody says something unpleasant, and you feel the urge to make a snide comeback. In earlier chapters we saw how powerful these positive and negative feedback loops can become in schools and companies and democracies.

When you're treated with kindness, it's easy to do the right thing. Easy, but not enough. To quote Jesus again, 'if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?'

The question is, can we take things a step further? What if we assume the best not only about our children, our co-workers, and our neighbours, but also about our enemies? That's considerably more difficult and can go against our gut instincts. Look at Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, perhaps the two greatest heroes of the twentieth century. They were pros at non-complimentary behaviour, but then again they were extra-ordinary individuals.

What about the rest of us? Are you and I capable of turning the other cheek? And can we make it work on a large scale – say, in prisons and police stations, after terrorist attacks or in times of war?”
~Rutger Bregman, 'Humankind: A Hopeful History'

Youth Precarity Traps

Guy Standing is co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network

Youth: urban nomads

The world's youth, more than 1 billion aged between 15 and 25, comprise the largest youth cohort in history, a majority in developing countries. The world may be ageing but there are a very large number of young people around, with much to be frustrated about. Although many other groups make up the precariat, the most common image is of young people emerging from school and college to enter a precarious existence lasting years, often made all the more frustrating because their parents’ generation had seemingly held stable jobs.

Youths have always entered the labour force in precarious positions, expecting to have to prove themselves and learn. But today's youth are not offered a reasonable bargain. Many enter temporary jobs that stretch well beyond what could be required to establish ‘employability’. A wheeze of flexibility has been to extend probationary periods, during which firms can legally pay lower wages and provide fewer benefits.

The declining probability of moving into a long-term contract builds up resentment. In France, for example, 75 per cent of all young employees start with temporary contracts and most remain in them; only those with degrees can expect to move into a ‘permanent’ position. Traditionally, youths could tolerate an initial period of being an outsider since they could look forward to being an insider eventually. Meanwhile, they lived off parents. Family solidarity alleviated the initial precariousness. But today, precariousness has been stretched while family solidarity is weaker; the family is more fragile and the older generation cannot foresee a balancing inter-generational reciprocity.

A feature of the restructuring of social income and wage flexibility has been the fall in wages and incomes of young people relative to their elders. Not only are more youth in precarious jobs, where wages are lower anyhow, but their bargaining position is weakened in accessing all jobs, while the absence of enterprise and state benefits intensifies their vulnerability to poverty.

An example is Japan, where average annual earnings of workers in their 20s fell by 14 per cent between 1997 and 2008. A report by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2010 found that 56 per cent of 16- to 34-year-old employed workers needed a second source of income to help them pay for basic living expenses.

Youths resent the insecurity and mostly want to pursue some sort of career. Yet many with a desire for a fulfilling life are unimpressed by stories of employment drudgery and stress of older generations. They reject the labourism of stable full-time jobs stretching out into the distance. In international polls, nearly two-thirds of young people say they would prefer to be ‘self-employed’, to work on their own rather than be in a job. But the flexible labour markets forged by the older generation of politicians and commercial interests condemn most youth to spending years in the precariat.

Youth make up the core of the precariat and will have to take the lead in forging a viable future for it. Youth has always been the repository of anger about the present and the harbinger of a better tomorrow. Some commentators, such as Daniel Cohen (2009: 28), see May 1968 as the point at which youth emerged as an ‘autonomous social force’. Certainly the ‘baby boomers’ fractured arrangements created by their parents’ generation. But youth has been the change agent throughout history. Rather, 1968 marked the beginning of the precariat, with its rejection of industrial society and its drab labourism. Subsequently, having railed against capitalism, the baby boomers took the pensions and other benefits, including cheap commodities from emerging market economies, and then ushered in flexibility and insecurity for their successors. One embittered jobless graduate (Hankinson, 2010) wrote, ‘Baby boomers had free education, affordable houses, fat pensions, early retirement and second homes. We've been left with education on the never-never [student debt] and a property ladder with rotten rungs. And the financial system which made our parents rich has left us choosing between crap job or no job’.

Of course, the tirade against the previous generation presents a false picture; it neglects class. Only a small minority of UK baby boomers went to university, while today half of all school leavers go on to some form of tertiary education. Many in the older generation suffered the ravages of de-industrialisation, as miners, steelworkers, dock workers, printers and so on were shunted into history. And most women had the added burden of economic marginality. The inter-generational interpretation could almost be a diversionary tactic, since it accords with a conservative view that carefully leaves out the role of globalisation (Willetts, 2010). Today's youth is not worse off than earlier generations. The predicament is just different and varies by class. Those former working-class communities had an ethos of social solidarity reproduced from generation to generation. They are now as much zones of the precariat as are the campuses and communities of what Italians call alternativi.

Their withering has created three challenges for today's youth. They have seen their parents lose status, income, pride and stability; they have no role models to emulate; and they drift into precarity traps, with low-paying jobs interspersed with spells of unemployment and enforced idleness. Within low-income neighbourhoods the ‘work ethic’ is passed down from generation to generation (Shildrick, MacDonald, Webster and Garthwaite, 2010). But the experience of a precariatised existence by one generation will also transmit attitudes and behavioural norms to the next. The first generation subject to systemic flexibility came of age in the 1980s. It is their children who are entering the labour market in the early twenty-first century. It cannot help that many expect to earn less and to have weaker careers than their parents. Remarkably, more UK youth say they belong to the working class than think their parents belong to it. There is a sense of downwardness, matched by what they see ahead of them.

------------------------

This is taken straight from Guy Standing's 'The Precariat: A New Dangerous Class'

You can find the original material here:
https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/the-precariat-the-new-dangerous-class/ch3-who-enters-the-precariat?fbclid=IwAR180SPv-_jqg2_Lo-ZBjATDxSfWwhyUWBL2PgStgeKz99Hz1GYlkNM49B8

Bureaucrats With Guns

 

Extract from David Graeber's Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

“At this point I can return to the question of bureaucracy.

In contemporary industrialised democracies, the legitimate administration of violence is turned over to what is euphemistically referred to as “criminal law enforcement”—particularly, to police officers. I say “euphemistically” because generations of police sociologists have pointed out that only a very small proportion of what police actually do has anything to do with enforcing criminal law—or with criminal matters of any kind.

Most of it has to do with regulations, or, to put it slightly more technically, with the scientific application of physical force, or the threat of physical force, to aid in the resolution of administrative problems. In other words they spend most of their time enforcing all those endless rules and regulations about who can buy or smoke or sell or build or eat or drink what where that don't exist in places like small-town or rural Madagascar.

So: Police are bureaucrats with weapons.

If you think about it, this is a really ingenious trick. Because when most of us think about police, we do not think of them as enforcing regulations. We think of them as fighting crime, and when we think of “crime,” the kind of crime we have in our minds is violent crime. Even though, in fact, what police mostly do is exactly the opposite: they bring the threat of force to bear on situations that would otherwise have nothing to do with it.

I find this all the time in public discussions. When trying to come up with a hypothetical example of a situation in which police are likely to be involved, people will almost invariably think of some act of interpersonal violence: a mugging or assault.

But even a moments reflection should make it clear that, when most real acts of physical assault do occur, even in major cities like Marseille or Montevideo or Minneapolis—domestic violence, gang fights, drunken brawls—the police do not get involved. Police are only likely to be called in if someone dies, or is so seriously hurt they end up in the hospital.

But this is because the moment an ambulance is involved, there is also paperwork; if someone is treated in hospital, there has to be a cause of injury, the circumstances become relevant, police reports have to be filed. And if someone dies there are all sorts of forms, up to and including municipal statistics.

So the only fights which police are sure to get involved in are those that generate some kind of paperwork. The vast majority of muggings or burglaries aren't reported either, unless there are insurance forms to be filled out, or lost documents that need to be replaced, and which can only be replaced if one files a proper police report. So most violent crime does not end up involving the police.

On the other hand, try driving down the street of any one of those cities in a car without license plates. We all know what's going to happen. Uniformed officers armed with sticks, guns, and/or tasers will appear on the scene almost immediately, and if you simply refuse to comply with their instructions, violent force will, most definitely, be applied.”
~David Graeber, Utopia of Rules

A Haven of Redemptive Suffering

 

Extract from Martin Luthor King Jr's Shattered Dreams

II

“What, then, is the answer? The answer lies in our willing acceptance of unwanted and unfortunate circumstances even as we still cling to a radiant hope, our acceptance of finite disappointment even as we adhere to infinite hope. This is not the grim, bitter acceptance of the fatalist, but the achievement found in Jeremiah's words, “This is a grief, and I must bear it.”

You must honestly confront your shattered dream. To follow the escapist method of attempting to put the disappointment out of your mind will lead to a psychologically injurious repression. Place you failure at the forefront of your mind and stare daringly at it. Ask yourself, “How may I transform this liability into an asset? How may I, confined in some narrow Roman cell and unable to reach life's Spain, transmute this dungeon of shame into a haven of redemptive suffering?”

You Were Born to Make People Ungrateful

 

Extract from Denis Diderot's 'Jacques the Fatalist'

"You can do nothing for me. I'm heartbroken that I owe you anything, and I'll never again owe you anything. You do more harm with your insults than you do good with your deeds. If I had the money I would throw it in your face, but I haven't got it so my daughter will become whatever God pleases and my son will get himself killed if necessary. As for me I'll go begging but it won't be at your door. I'll not incur any more obligations towards such a wicked man as you. Make sure you get yourself paid out of my oxen and horses and implements - and much good may it do you. You were born to make people ungrateful and I don't want to be ungrateful.
Goodbye forever."
~Denis Diderot, 'Jacques the Fatalist'

Empathy

 

Extract from Rutger Bregman's 'Humankind: A Hopeful History'

I thought this chapter might be of use to a couple of friends of mine who are experiencing empathy overload.

“As I read about the split nature of infants and toddlers – basically friendly, but with xenophobic tendencies – I was reminded of the 'love hormone' oxytocin. That's the stuff found in high concentrations in Lyudmila Trut's foxes in Siberia (see Chapter 3). Scientists now know that this hormone, which plays a crucial role in love and affection, can also make us distrustful of strangers.

Could oxytocin help explain why good people do bad things? After all, people have another impressive instinct rooted deep in our puppyish nature: the ability to feel empathy. We can step out of our bubble and into someone else's shoes. We're hardwired to feel, at an emotional level, what it's like to be the stranger.

Not only I can we do this, but we're good at it. People are emotional vacuum cleaners, always sucking up other people's feelings. Just think how easily books and movies can make us laugh or cry. For me, sad movies on flights are always the worst (I'm constantly pressing pause so fellow passengers won't feel the need to comfort me).

For a long time I thought this fabulous instinct for feeling another person's pain could help bring people closer together. What the world needed, surely, was a lot more empathy. But then I read a new book by one of those baby researchers.

When people ask Professor Bloom what his book's about, he'll say:
'It's about empathy.'

They smile and nod – until he adds:
'I'm against it.'

Paul Bloom isn't joking. According to this psychologist, empathy isn't a beneficent sun illuminating the world. It's a spotlight. A searchlight. It singles out a specific person or group of people in your life, and while you're busy sucking up all the emotions bathed in that one ray of light, the rest of the world fades away.

Take the following study carried out by another psychologist. In this experiment, a series of volunteers first heard the sad story of Sheri Summers, a ten-year-old suffering from a fatal disease. She's on the waiting list for a life-saving treatment, but time's running out. Subjects were told they could move Sheri up the waiting list, but they're asked to be objective in their decision.

Most people didn't consider giving Sheri an advantage. They understood full well that every child on that list was sick and in need of treatment.

Then came the twist. A second group of subjects was given the same scenario, but was then asked to imagine how Sheri must be feeling: Wasn't it heartbreaking that this little girl was so ill? Turns out this single shot of empathy changed everything. The majority now wanted to let Sheri jump the line. If you think about it, that's a pretty shaky moral choice. The spotlight on Sheri could effectively mean the death of other children who'd been on the list longer.

Now you may think: 'Exactly! That's why we need more empathy.' We ought to put ourselves not only in Sheri's shoes, but in those of the other children on waiting lists all over the world. More emotions, more feelings, more empathy!

But that's not how spotlights work. Go ahead and try it: imagine yourself in the shoes of one other person. Now imagine yourself in the shoes of a hundred other people. And a million. How about seven billion?

We simply can't do it.

In practical terms, says Professor Bloom, empathy is a hopelessly limited skill.

It's something we feel for people who are close to us; for people we can smell, see, hear and touch. For family and friends, for fans of our favourite band, and maybe for the homeless guy on our own street corner. For cute puppies we can cuddle and pet, even as we eat animals mistreated on factory farms out of sight. And for people we see on TV – mostly those the camera zooms in on, while sad music swells in the background.

As I read Bloom's book, I began to realise that empathy resembles nothing so much as that modern-day phenomenon: the news. In Chapter 1, we saw that the news also functions like a spotlight. Just as empathy misleads us by zooming in on the specific, the news deceives us by zooming in on the exceptional.

One thing is certain: a better world doesn't start with more empathy. If anything, empathy makes us less forgiving, because the more we identify with victims, the more we generalise about our enemies. The bright spotlight we shine on our chosen few makes us blind to the perspective of our adversaries, because everybody else falls outside our view.

This is the mechanism that puppy expert Brian Hare talked about – the mechanism that makes us both the friendliest and the cruelest species on the planet. The sad truth is that empathy and xenophobia go hand in hand. They're two sides of the same coin.”
~Rutger Bregman, 'Humankind: A Hopeful History'

Erin's Story

The American Psychiatric Association's (APA) disease model encourages an internal narration that robs one of a sense of self-agency

"The person is not encouraged to examine the context of his or her life. What has happened? What might be changed? Or, even more radical: Are there times when suffering is to be embraced?

Erin's story tells of the harm that can result from adopting this type of internal narrative, and the benefit that can come from doing the opposite and examining the context of one's distress. In her case, it was a psychologist who helped her see herself in a new light.

Today, at 31, Erin is engaging, keenly intelligent, an displays a confidence that, coupled with a genuine humility, draws people to her. She graduated magna cum laude from a good university, worked and saved money for six years, got married, and is now applying to Ph.D programs in psychology.

To look at her life now, it seems she is one of those people to whom things always came easily—school, friends, relationships. But, in fact, she had a difficult childhood. Her parents were divorced when she was 11, the same year her mother was diagnosed with lyphoma, and soon she was having difficulty with her school work and her friends. She struggled with anxiety, irritability, anger and depression. She was told she had ADHD. She resisted that diagnosis, and only took the stimulant medication for a short time (which she found didn't help). During her senior year of high school, her mother's cancer worsened. Two very difficult years followed, with Erin prescribed medications for ADHD, depression, and anxiety, but the drugs never seemed to “fix” anything, or make her feel better. Then, in the fall of her junior year at college, her mother died. Now Erin struggled in every aspect of her life, her anxiety and depression worsening.

Today, she recalls, with a self-depreciating laugh, she can't even begin to count “how many cell phones” she broke in fits of rage. Years after her mother died she remained depressed, and finally she gave in.

There was something “wrong” with her. Maybe not ADHD, but something else. She went to see a therapist, consistently asking him to diagnose her, and “tell me what was wrong with me.” She grew increasingly frustrated when he refused to do so. He wasn't giving her what the DSM said he should, and finally she pressed him further. At last, he responded:

“Do you really want me to tell you what you have?” Relief flooded over her. “Oh thank God,” she thought. “I finally got him to tell me, now I'll know what's wrong with me.” The clinician then gave his diagnosis: “I think you have a broken heart.”

Erin's narrative changed with that one sentence. As she puts it, telling this story 11 years later, “everything shifted.” Instead of thinking that something was WRONG with her, she realised that something had HAPPENED to her. Erin now viewed her past from the perspective of what she had been through, rather than what DSM disorder she had (i.e., what brain disease), and once she did that, a different future opened up for her. To have a broken heart, when you have suffered the losses she had, was to be normal.”
~Robert Whitaker & Lisa Cosgrove's 'Psychiatry Under the Influence'

This follows on into my next blog post 'A Barrier to Social Justice'...coming soon.

Compassion Fatigue: The Lopsided Imagination

Extract from David Graeber’s Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

“Curiously, it was Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, who first observed the phenomenon we now refer to as “compassion fatigue.” Human beings, he proposed, are normally inclined not only to imaginatively identify with their fellows, but as a result, to spontaneously feel one another’s joys and sorrows. The poor, however, are so consistently miserable that otherwise sympathetic observers are simply overwhelmed, and are forced, without realising it, to blot out their existence entirely. The result is that while those on the bottom of a social ladder spend a great deal of time imagining the perspectives of, and genuinely caring about, those on the top, it almost never happens the other way around.



Whether one is dealing with masters and servants, men and women, employers and employees, rich and poor, structural inequality—what I’ve been calling structural violence—invariably creates highly lopsided structures of the imagination. Since I think Smith was right to observe that imagination tends to bring with it sympathy, the result is that victims of structural violence tend to care about its beneficiaries far more than those beneficiaries care about them. This might well be, after the violence itself, the single most powerful force preserving such relations.”
~David Graeber, ‘Utopia of Rules’


David Graeber is an American anthropologist, activist and author. He is a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

Find his books here:
https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/1501143336
https://www.amazon.com/Utopia-Rules-David-Graeber/dp/1612195539
https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290

Or if you are in Hobart, you can order them from Cracked and Spineless, just send them a message on on Facebook here to place an order:
https://www.facebook.com/CrackedNSpineless/

Bureaucracy and Structural Violence

Extract from David Graeber’s Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

 

“What I would like to argue is that situations created by violence—particularly structural violence, by which I mean forms of pervasive social inequality that are ultimately backed up by the threat of physical harm—invariably tend to create the kinds of wilful blindness we normally associate with bureaucratic procedures.

 

To put it crudely: it is not so much that bureaucratic procedures are inherently stupid, or even that they tend to produce behaviour that they themselves define as stupid—though they do do that—but rather, that they are invariably ways of managing social situations that are already stupid because they are founded on structural violence. This approach, I think, has the potential to tell us a great deal about both how bureaucracy has come to pervade every aspect of our lives, and why we don’t notice it.

Now. I admit that this emphasis on violence might seem odd. We are not used to thinking of nursing homes or banks or even HMOs as violent institutions—except perhaps in the most abstract and metaphorical sense. But the violence I’m referring to here is not abstract. I am not speaking of conceptual violence. I am speaking of violence in the literal sense: the kind that involves, say, one person hitting another over the head with a wooden stick.



All of these are institutions involved in the allocation of resources within a system of property rights regulated and guaranteed by governments in a system that ultimately rests on the threat of violence: that is, the ability to call up people dressed in uniforms, willing to threaten to hit others over the head with wooden sticks.

It is curious how rarely citizens in industrial democracies actually think about this fact, or how instinctively we try to discount it’s importance. This is what makes it possible, for example, for graduate students to be able to spend days in the stacks of university libraries poring over Foucault-inspired theoretical tracts about the declining importance of coercion as a factor in modern life without ever reflecting on the fact that, had they insisted on their right to enter the stacks without showing a properly stamped and validated ID, armed men would have been summoned to physically remove them, using whatever force might be required.

 

It’s almost as if the more we allow the aspects of our everyday existence to fall under the purview of bureaucratic relations, the more everyone concerned colludes to downplay the fact (perfectly obvious to those actually running the system) that all of it ultimately depends on the threat of physical harm.

Actually, the very use of the term “structural violence” is an excellent case in point. When I first began working on this essay, I took it for granted that the term referred to actual violence that operates in an indirect form.

Imagine, if you will, some warlike tribe (let’s call them the Alphas) that sweeps out of the desert and seizes a swath of land inhabited by peaceful farmers (let’s call them Omegas). But instead of exacting tribute, they appropriate all the fertile land, and arrange for their children to have privileged access to most forms of practical education, at the same time initiating a religious ideology that holds that they are intrinsically superior beings, finer and more beautiful and more intelligent, and that the Omegas, now largely reduced to working on their estates, have been cursed by the divine powers for some terrible sin, and have become stupid, ugly, and base.

And perhaps the Omegas internalise their disgrace and come to act as if they believe they really are guilty of something. In a sense perhaps they do believe it. But on a deeper level it doesn’t make a lot of sense to ask whether they do or not. The whole arrangement is the fruit of violence: the fact that the Omegas are quite aware that if anyone directly challenged property arrangements, or access to education, swords would be drawn and people’s heads would almost certainly end up being lopped off.

 

In a case like this, what we talk about in terms of “belief” are simply the psychological techniques people develop to accommodate themselves into this reality. We have no idea how they would act, or what they would think, if the Alphas’ command of the means of violence were to somehow disappear.

This is what I had in mind when I first began using the phrase “structural violence”—structures that could only be created and maintained by the threat of violence, even if in their ordinary, day-to-day workings, no actual physical violence takes place. If one reflects on the matter, the same can be said of most phenomena that are ordinarily referred to as “structural violence” in the literature—racism, sexism, class privilege—even if their actual mode of operation is infinitely more complex.

Here I was probably inspired most by my readings in feminist literature, which often does speak of structural violence in this way. It is widely noted, for instance, that rates of sexual assault increase dramatically at precisely the moments when women begin challenging “gender norms” of work, comportment, or dress. It’s really quite the same as the conquerors suddenly taking out their swords again.

But for the most part academics do not use the term this way. The current usage really harkens back to sixties “peace studies,” and it is used to refer to “structures” that, it is claimed, have the same violent effects as violence, even though they may not involve physical acts of violence at all.

The list of structures is pretty mush the same list (racism, sexism, poverty and the rest), but the implication is there could, for example, exist a system of patriarchy that operated in the total absence of domestic violence or sexual assault, or a system of racism that was in no way backed up by government-enforced property rights—despite the fact that, to my knowledge, no example of either has been observed.

Once again, it’s puzzling why anyone would make such an argument, unless they were for some reason determined to insist that the physical violence isn't the essence of the thing, that this isn’t what really needs to be addressed. To pose the question of violence directly would, apparently, mean opening a series of doors that most academics seem to feel would really be better off left shut.



 

Most of these doors lead directly to the problem of what we call “the state”—and the bureaucratic structures through which it actually exercises power. Is the state’s claim to a monopoly of violence ultimately the problem, or is the state an essential part of any possible solution? Is the very practice of laying down rules and then threatening physical harm against anyone who does not follow them itself objectionable, or is it just that the authorities are not deploying such threats in the right way?

To talk of racism, sexism, and the rest as a bunch of abstract structures floating about is the best way to dodge such questions entirely.”
~David Graeber, 'Utopia of Rules'



 
David Graeber is an American anthropologist, activist and author. He is a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

Find his books here:
https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/1501143336
https://www.amazon.com/Utopia-Rules-David-Graeber/dp/1612195539
https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290

Or if you are in Hobart, you can find Cracked and Spineless on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/CrackedNSpineless/

Critiques of Bureaucracy

Extract from David Graeber's Utopia of Rules

This is just a few paragraphs from the introduction in the first few pages of David Graeber's book. I'll be posting some of the bits I find interesting as I go along.

I've already read two of his books 'Debt' and 'Bullsh*t Jobs', and I always find them surprising, informative and entertaining. I love the way he writes and some of the things he has to say have blown my mind wide open.

I highly recommend you get your hands on one of his books. At the very least he provides a refreshing alternative perspective.


"The social movements of the sixties were, on the whole, Left-wing in inspiration, but they were also rebellions against bureaucracy, or, to put it more accurately, rebellions against the bureaucratic mindset, against the soul-destroying conformity of the postwar welfare states. In the face of the grey functionaries of both state-capitalist and state-socialist regimes, sixties rebels stood for individual expression and spontaneous conviviality, and against (“rules and regulations, who needs them?”) every form of social control.

With the collapse of the old welfare states, all this has come to seem decidedly quaint. As the language of antibureaucratic individualism has been adopted, with increasing ferocity, by the Right, which insists on “market solutions” to every social problem, the mainstream Left has increasingly reduced itself to fighting a kind of pathetic rearguard action, trying to salvage remnants of the old welfare state: it has acquiesced with—often even spearheaded—attempts to make government efforts more “efficient” through the partial privatisation of services and the incorporation of ever-more “market principles,” “market incentives,” and market-based “accountability processes” into the structure of the bureaucracy itself.

The result is political catastrophe. There’s really no other way to put it. What is presented as the “moderate” Left solution to any social problems—and radical Left solutions are, almost everywhere now, ruled out tout court—has invariably come to be some nightmare fusion of the worst elements of bureaucracy and the worst elements of capitalism. It’s as if someone had consciously tried to create the least appealing possible political position. It is a testimony to the genuine lingering power of leftist ideals that anyone would even consider voting for a party that promoted this sort of thing—because surely, if they do, it’s not because they actually think these are good policies, but because these are the only policies anyone who identifies themselves as left-of-centre is allowed to set forth.

Is there any wonder, then, that every time there is a social crisis, it is the Right, rather than the Left, which becomes the venue for the expression of popular anger?

The Right, at least, has a critique of bureaucracy. It’s not a very good one. But at least it exists. The Left has none. As a result, when those who identify with the Left do have anything negative to say about bureaucracy, they are usually forced to adopt a watered-down version of the right-wing critique."
~David Graeber, 'Utopia of Rules'


David Graeber is an American anthropologist, activist and author. He is a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

Loren Mosher & The Soteria Project

My blackboard quotes must be getting up someone's nose.
They keep getting defaced.

Extract from Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic

 

“The third study was led by Loren Mosher, head of schizophrenia at the NIMH [National Institute of Mental Health, USA], Although he may have been the nation's top schizophrenia doctor at the time, his vision of the illness was at odds with many of his peers, who had come to think that schizophrenics suffered from a “broken brain.”

He believed that psychosis could arise from emotional and inner trauma and, in its own way, could be a coping mechanism. As such, he believed there was the possibility that people could grapple with their hallucinations and delusions, struggle through a schizophrenic break, and regain their sanity.

And if that was so, he reasoned that if he provided newly psychotic patients with a safe house, one staffed by people who had an evident empathy for others and who wouldn't be frightened by strange behaviour, many would get well, even though they weren't treated with antipsychotics.

“I thought that sincere human involvement and understanding was critical to healing interactions,” he said. “The idea was to treat people as people, as human beings, with dignity and respect.”

The twelve-room Victorian house he opened in Santa Clara, California, in 1971 could shelter six patients at a time. He called it Soteria House, and eventually he started a second home as well, Emanon. All told, the Soteria Project ran for twelve years, with eighty-two patients treated at the two homes.

As early as 1974, Mosher started reporting that his Soteria patients were faring better than a matched cohort of patients being treated conventionally with drugs at a hospital, and in 1979, he announced his two-year results.

At the end of six weeks, psychotic symptoms had abated as much in his Soteria patients as in the hospitalised patients, and at the end of two years, the Soteria patients had “lower psychopathology scores, fewer [hospital] readmissions, and better global adjustment."

Later, he and John Bola, an assistant proffessor at the University of Southern California, reported on their medication use: Forty-two percent of the Soteria patients had never been exposed to drugs, 39 percent had used them on a temporary basis, and only 19 percent had needed them throughout the two-year follow-up.

“Contrary to popular views, minimal use of antipsychotic medications combined with specially designed psychosocial intervention for patients newly identified with schizophrenia spectrum disorder is not harmful but appears to be advantageous,” Mosher and Bola wrote. “We think that the balance of risks and benefits associated with the common practice of medicating nearly all early episodes of psychosis should be re-examined.”

Three NIHM-funded studies, and all pointed to the same conclusion. Perhaps 50 percent of newly diagnosed schizophrenia patients, if treated without antipsychotics, would recover and stay well through lengthy follow-up periods. Only a minority of patients seemed to need to take the drugs continuously.

The “revolving door” syndrome that had become so familiar was due in large part to the drugs, even though, in clinical trials, the drugs had proven to be effective in knocking down psychotic symptoms.

Carpenter and McGlashan neatly summarised the scientific conundrum that psychiatry now faced:

“There is no question that, once patients are placed on medication, they are less vulnerable to relapse if maintained on neuroleptics. But what if these patients had never been treated with drugs to begin with?...We raise the possibility that antipsychotic medication may make schizophrenic patients more vulnerable to future relapse than would be the case in the natural course of the illness.”

And if that was so, these drugs were increasing the likelihood that a person who suffered a psychotic break would become chronically ill.”
~Robert Whitaker, 'Anatomy of an Epidemic'

Robert Whitaker is an American journalist and author, writing primarily about medicine, science, and history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Whitaker_(author)

 
Loren Richard Mosher (September 3, 1933, Monterey, California – July 10, 2004, Berlin) was an American psychiatrist, clinical professor of psychiatry, expert on schizophrenia and the chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia in the National Institute of Mental Health (1968–1980).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_Mosher

History of Nauru - Draft Notes

Satellite image of the Topside detention camp in Nauru taken on July 24, 2013.

Notes taken from Peter Dauvergne's Environmentalism of the Rich

 

These are just some rough notes I've taken regarding the history of Nauru. I had no idea how many abuses that place has suffered. Using it a detention centre is just the latest chapter in a long history of abuses going back to the 1800s.

I've been pretty exhausted lately and I don't really have the energy - emotional or otherwise - to go back and transcribe this as I usually do. I'm not really feeling safe at home (I live in public housing) and I've been having trouble relaxing.

I can't really bring myself to go over these horrible facts again. You'll have to forgive any errors - spelling or otherwise - but here they are...my (very) rough notes on the history of Nauru...

-Snow Hunter under Captain John Fearn discovers Island, greeted by friendly Islanders. (Ironically) names it 'Pleasant Island' (1798)

-Nauru begins as relatively peaceful society. There are tribal disputes, but they are more or less kept in check
-Convict “beachcombers” escape to Nauru and settle the island (1842)
-Pigs and coconuts traded for guns and alcohol
-Nauru tribal leader killed in drunken fight (1870s)
-Bloody conflict ensues
-Germans want to use island to facilitate copra trade and annex island (1888) and threaten to imprison tribal leaders if they do not hand over guns and ammo
-Decade long civil war was over, but by then 500 people killed, nearly one third of local population

-Phosphate ore discovered (1899)

-Pacific Island Company changed to Pacific Phosphate company (1905)

-Phosphate mines with little regard for ecosystem (trashed)
-By this time Australia was in control of Nauru, having captured it in WW1

-Australia rules Nauru as offshore mining site
-Australia and New Zealand get phosphate for agriculture at drastically reduced price
-Phosphate mining comes to halt as Japan captures the island

-Japanese troops were merciless (1942)
Abuses include:

• beatings
• summary executions
• deportations
• mass drownings (such as people with leprosy)

-By 1945 at wars end fewer than 600 Nauruans left alive
-By 1968 one third of Nauru had been strip mined
-Exports exceeded $2 billion. Nauru becomes wealthy on paper, but corrupt government meant Nauru people far from wealthy
-Nauru seeks compensation for lost profits. Australia pays $50b million in 1994 plus $57 million over next 20 years. Britain fronts $12 million to ease Aussie burden. Compensation not a fraction of what was taken

-Anticipating end of mining Nauru turns to finance and becomes tax haven opening 400 foreign banks funneling money for tax evasion and also tens of billions of dollars worth of criminal profits

-By 2004 phosphate mines dry up.
-2001 Nauru opens up detention centres
-2007 detention centres close only to be reopened in 2012
-We all know the rest...

We owe that island a lot, the least of which is to stop using them for our own nefarious economic and political reasons.

One World

Integrating societies into a world economy has been brutal and wrenching since at least the voyage of Columbus in 1492
-Peter Dauvergne

Extract from Peter Dauvergne's Environmentalism of the Rich 

“Wars mark the making of the international society of states; slavery and violence accompanied the rise of multinational corporations and world markets...Even the very idea of 'one world' – of one people living on one earth – can only be understood as emerging out of a history of imperialism and colonialism, of bloodshed and cruelty, where Western values and ways of knowing have come to dominate.

  

 

Forgetting this history can make globalisation seem innocuous, as if it's nothing more than the process of new technologies connecting up the world, so people, money, and ideas can travel faster and farther. Being globalised entails far more, though, than just being able to fly from Los Angeles to Sydney in 16 hours, or regularly eating food grown a half-world away, or connecting billions of people on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

 

Globalisation can be violent and exploitative, little different from imperialism. Manifestations include world powers forcing developing countries to deregulate economic affairs, offering grants and demanding loan repayments to open borders to trade, natural resource investors, and foreign manufacturers.

One sign of the resulting financial cost is the rising external debt of the developing world, which has gone from $2 trillion in 2000 to more than $5 trillion today. The private sector accounts for more than half of this debt – a debt that reinforces highly uneven and unequal South-North trade flows, with developing countries exporting large quantities of natural resources and low-priced goods (partly to earn foreign exchange to service debt).

 

Rising inequality and concentrating financial power are further signs of the globalisation of unsustainability. Just 1 percent of the world population holds half of global wealth. Around 45,000 people are now worth over $100 million while 124,000 people are worth over $50 million. And the rich keep getting richer. We see this with the thirteen-fold increase in the number of billionaires since the mid-1980s.

 

At the same time around 2.2 billion people were still earning less than $2 a day in 2011 – a figure not far off what it was in 1980. This crude measure, moreover, misses much of the hardship in the poorest countries, where monocrop plantations have displaced subsistence farming, where good jobs in rural communities are rare, where working-age adults have left villages, and where hundreds of million of people live in slums, some even surviving by scavenging for food and recyclables in rancid mountains of garbage.”
Peter Dauvergne, 'Environmentalism of the Rich'

Peter Dauvergne is an author and environmentalist. He is Professor of International Relations at the University of British Columbia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Dauvergne

Environmentalism: Policing Itself

 

This post includes another extract from Peter Dauvergne's Environmentalism of the Rich

 

The environmental movement has been self-policed from within it's own ranks, undermining it's overall effectiveness.

I would like to discuss two ways this has been happening, although I'm sure there are more. The fragmentary and dynamic nature of the environmental movement have different groups bickering and undermining each other for a number of reasons. I think it would be a mistake to think that I've discovered them all.

The two methods of self-policing I would like to discuss are:

1. Different factions criticising each other for being either too extreme or for not doing enough

2. People from within the ranks of environmentalism being actively bribed and funded by powerful financial interests to turn members of environmental movements against their own people

First, I would like to visit Peter Dauvergne's 'Environmentalism of the Rich'.

Then I would like to refer to an anecdote I heard only recently from a close friend. Let's call him Barry, although that is not his real name (I know him well enough to know without asking that he'd prefer to remain anonymous).

How much weight you put in this anecdote I will leave to you. I have no better way of testing his honesty than you do of mine. All I can say is that I trust this person implicitly as a close friend, and I can see no reason he would lie to me about this (at least I have never caught him out telling a lie, and I have known him for many years now).

But first, to Peter Dauvergne's 'Environmentalism of the Rich'...

Internal Bickering, State and Corporate Infiltration, Suppression, and Appropriation of Environmental Discourse

 

“Since the 1990's the moderating tendencies within rainforest activism [have] caused...great distress. Like most global causes these moderating tendencies have become stronger since then, while the fate of those who continue to campaign against injustice remain grim.

Hundreds of rainforest activists and indigenous leaders...have been murdered or have “disappeared” over the last two decades...animal rights activists and more confrontational groups are increasingly being sidelined, facing derision and charges of “eco-terrorism,” not only from the mainstream media, business associations, and state security agencies, but also from within the environmental movement itself...

...Activist groups that reject or challenge the politics and outcomes of environmentalism of the rich face a whole host of risks, from being labelled “unrealistic” and “naïve” to being treated as subversives.

Meanwhile, as the recent history of WWF shows, embracing the discourses of sustainable development, eco-business, stakeholder partnerships, and eco-consumerism opens up many opportunities for NGO's to access new resources, money, and corridors of power.

In this context many NGOs are turning to “cause marketing,” (tagging the purchase of a product to fundraising) and the cobranding of commercial goods to pay for staff and programs. They are partnering with business to set up eco-labeling and eco-certification organisations, such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and the Roundtable on Responsible Soy.

And they are turning to consumers as sources and forces of change, urging them to be “consumer activists” and purchase more products to save the planet...

...As the environmental movement increasingly comes to embrace capitalism and consumerism as solutions (rather than as causes) of unsustainability, states and multinational business are progressively capturing ecological discourses and subsuming environmental networks, deploying the language of sustainability to obfuscate, and in some instances even promote, unsustainable and inequitable consumption.

The end result is to reinforce the belief in the value of national economic growth, technological diffusion, and the globalisation of trade, markets, and investment. Privatisation, deregulation, and liberalisation end up depicted as valuable for sustainability, said to promote the economic growth so necessarily to implement environmental regulations and maintain political stability.

State and corporate discourses further reassure people that modest policy reforms will suffice to produce sustainability, while still allowing consumption (and thus revenues and profits) to continue to rise.

At the same time, the discourses of environmentalism of the rich are reinforcing a belief among well-off consumers in the value of small lifestyle changes and eco-product purchases – again, even in the face of an escalating crisis. Such efforts are now a defining feature of environmentalism in wealthy countries. Consumers are being urged to buy green detergents and order sustainably produced seafood in restaurants. And they're being advised to unplug appliances, shut off dripping taps, and air-dry clothes. Although laudable as individual acts, such efforts do not get at the patterns of extraction, production, and consumption that are causing global unsustainability. Recycling a Starbucks cup or a Coke bottle does nothing to address the subjugation and marginalisation of the worlds least-protected peoples and most vulnerable ecosystems. Nor are sustainable development policies, eco-business initiatives, NGO-business partnerships, and voluntary market-based mechanisms doing much here. At best these manifestations of environmentalism of the rich reduce some of the local symptoms of unsustainability, but do not get at the causes that are spreading like a common cold as the world economy globalises.”
~Peter Dauvergne, 'Environmentalism of the Rich' (p. 13-15)

Infiltration and Bribery: Up-Close

I'd like now to turn to a story I heard only a few days ago, form a friend of mine who was involved in activist group many years ago, during the height of forestry activism in Tasmania...

I've always loved living in Hobart, my home town, and I've never really felt a strong urge to travel. Personally I feel you get a richer experience out of life if you experiment with different ways of thinking and living than to simply travel geographically – and that's what I've done.

One thing I've noticed about many people who travel, is there mindset doesn't seem to change very much, with the exception that they often come back from travel with a misplaced sense of 'worldliness' that I can only ascribe to having spent more time overseas with like-minded people, mistakenly 'discovering' that their way of thinking is shared with some people overseas.

I've always called this kind of behaviour out by saying something along the lines of “you've just gone overseas, found more douche-bags just like yourself to hang out with and come back thinking that your way of thinking is 'the right way' of thinking.'”

I don't consider this “worldy” any more than I consider it a real lifestyle change.

So I don't travel much. I can think of a million ways you could better spend your time, energy and money if your true goal is to “open your mind”...and you can do it wherever you are. Here or overseas.

I did once spend a little time living in Melbourne, which I detested. I worked for the Apple Centre on Chapel Street (a “trendy” outer suburb of Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria, Australia) while I was there. I found that the whole experience just made me feel like a number. An insignificant person in a sea of pretence.

I learned that I wasn't a “city person” at all, and decided that if I didn't like Melbourne, I'd probably like bigger cities like Sydney even less.

By the time I returned home, I felt physically, mentally, spiritually, culturally and financially drained. I spent a little time in the bush to wash off the dirty feeling left by this so-called “cultural hub” (you can imagine, then, how I must be feeling right now as my home city of Hobart is slowly becoming more and more like Melbourne. It really is starting to feel like an outer suburb of Melbourne...in fact I've started calling it “New Melbourne”).

It was after returning from this trip that I first spent a bit of time in activist camps around the state. I guess I started to see the true value of what we had, and wanted to help fight for it.

But I wasn't really welcome.

I had a bunch of ideas which I thought could really help the movement, mostly ways of trying to convince people who weren't “the activist type” to consider some of the things we had to say.

One idea I had was called “Suits in Boots”. The idea was meant to shake the idea that you had to look, dress or behave a certain way to have concern over the Tasmanian wilderness. I got the idea from thinking about another organisation “Doctors for Forests”.

The idea of “Suits in Boots” was to have a bus run from town during peoples lunch breaks. To organise with as many organisations that were willing to have an extended, two hour lunch break on whatever day suited the organisation, whether it be a government department or a private organisation, and to bus these people to the forest for a short photo shoot. I thought that perhaps we could have a set of green boots made from some sustainable material such as hemp or recycled plastic, and get the people to come dressed as they would for work, put on the boots and have a publicity shot in the forest, to make a collection of publicity shots of different people from all different walks of life showing their support for the Tasmanian wilderness.

I was pretty young back then, and I couldn't understand why I encountered such resistance to ideas like this. I had a few, but I found that trying to talk about them often left me feeling ostracised.

After hearing my friend Barry talk about his experience, I think I now know why they didn't seem to trust me.

Barry too, was a creative thinker, and came up with some very smart ideas.

One of his ideas was to get all the activists dressed as forestry workers, making them virtually undetectable from the workers that were supposed to be on site. According to him, they managed to get through a fair bit of the day walking around a restricted forestry work area undetected before they were finally caught out.

But then he was approached by the logging interests (I'm unsure if it was Forestry Tasmania, the so-called government regulator or Gunns Ltd itself, the main forestry company at the time) and given an offer.

According to Barry, he was singled out as an intelligent organiser and offered quite a large amount of money to come into their employ as an infiltrator, to give names and descriptions of the people involved.

But they underestimated him. He told them they didn't, in his own words, “have any idea of what the word 'loyalty' means.” One of the reasons I respect the man so much.

Hearing that story made me realise that this had happened - probably more than once – before I had shown up on the scene. I can see now why the group had become so insular and resistant to intelligent people with bright ideas. It more than likely just made them suspicious of me right from the word go.

So I guess you could say, even without the ability to convert people like Barry or myself, the tactic was still working. It had activists afraid of each other, and of the very ideas that could make their campaign more successful. It made them much more inclined to follow “purists” who in a lot of cases used tactics that alienated others more than it changed hearts and minds.

I eventually gave up trying to participate myself. By the time I tried to contribute, the damage had already been done. It just took me a bit of age, maturity and experience to understand why.

Social Others & Luxury Creep

Extract from Rachel Sherman's Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

 

“Regardless of their struggles, almost all my respondents described becoming acclimated over time to making more expensive consumer choices.

Maya said that she would not spend $1,000 on a dress, but added that:

“I didn't want to be one of those rich people that just spends money without thinking about it. But I will say that there was a period where my thinking about what was reasonable became very different than it was, like, you know, in 1992. So, over the span of ten years, what I [had] considered a luxury or extravagant or whatever didn't seem as extravagant.”

Eliana, who's inherited wealth totaled about $9 million and who believed deeply in economic and racial justice, said she felt like a hypocrite, because:

“I don't think I fully live out all my values, I guess I would say. I used to say I was gonna be a revolutionary, and then I had that first massage.”

Beatrice identified this phenomenon as “luxury creep”:

“Well, there's definitely been luxury creep in my life. I just feel comfortable spending more money on more things. There's luxury creep within categories that look like necessities. So, like, I spend more and more money on clothes...We spend a lot of money on wine...We've recently had a big leap in the amount of money that we spend on bottles of wine, like fifteen or twenty-five dollars. So we would have bought wine before, and considered it, like, a life necessity, but it's the luxury creep aspect of it that's changed.”

Beatrice went on to associate luxury creep with her peer group, saying, “It's a very insidious thing, you know, because it's much less conscious than like, 'keeping up with the Joneses' kind of conspicuous consumption, that competitive consumption thing. It's really about this like – I mean for me, it's just like this vague sense of what's normal.” 

Rachel Sherman is an associate professor of sociology at the New School for Social Research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Sherman_(sociologist)

Inequality Makes Everyone Act Strange

Extract from Keith Payne’s The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Changes the Way We Think, Live and Die

 

“...when the level of inequality becomes too large to ignore, everyone starts acting strange.

But they do not act strange in just any old way. Inequality affects our actions and our feelings in the same systematic, predictable fashion again and again.

It makes us short-sighted and prone to risky behaviour, willing to sacrifice a secure future for immediate gratification. It makes us more inclined to make self-defeating decisions. It makes us believe weird things, superstitiously clinging to the world we want it to be rather than the world as it is.

Inequality divides us, cleaving us into camps not only of income but also of ideology and race, eroding our trust in one another. It generates stress and makes us all less healthy and less happy.

Picture a neighbourhood full of people like the ones I’ve described above: short-sighted, irresponsible people making bad choices; mistrustful people segregated by race and by ideology; superstitious people who won’t listen to reason; people who turn to self-destructive habits as they cope with the stress and anxieties of their daily lives.

These are the classic tropes of poverty and could serve as a stereotypical description of the population of any poor inner-city neighbourhood or depressed rural trailer park. But as we will see in the chapters ahead, inequality can produce these tendencies even among the middle-class and wealthy individuals.

What is also notable about the air rage study is that it illustrates that inequality is not the same as poverty, although it can feel an awful lot like it...Inequality makes people feel poor and act poor, even when they’re not.

Inequality so mimics poverty in our minds that the United States of America, the richest and most unequal of countries, has a lot of features that better resemble a developing nation than a superpower.

[We should keep this in mind since] income and wealth inequality are higher now than they have been in generations.”
~Keith Payne, ‘The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Changes the Way We Think, Live and Die’

And before you all say “well yes, that may be so...but this is not America!” I’d ask you to keep this in mind:

 

 

You can find the audio from which this quote is taken here:

BigIdeas on ABC's Radio National: Joseph’s Stiglitz's lecture in Adelaide