"The more responsibility that can be laid at the feet of individuals, the easier it is to justify the many inequalities in our world. If addicts, sinners, refugees, prisoners, the homeless, the obese, the unemployed and the poor can be blamed for their condition, there is little obligation to help them."
- Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom
The above quote is just one of many hugely important points taken from Raoul Martinez's book, Creating Freedom that is at times a quite devastating critique of neoliberal capitalism & how it is affecting & effectively destroying so many human lives, not to mention the damage on the ecological system on which all life on Earth depends. The subject matter is wide ranging, beginning with an exploration of the idea of whether any human being can be truly responsible for who they are & what they do - "A psychopath may make many horrendous choices, but they would not include choosing the brain of a psychopath" - he writes in chapter one, through to ideas about the ignoring of the decisive importance of luck on our lives, privilege, individualism & how all these things feed into our culture. The way politics shapes our world is a constant throughout the book & Martinez's ideas about how our increasing political apathy has promoted the kind of individualism which now runs amok in the west is dissected in detail. A lot of this book, I have to admit, makes for distressing reading. The extent to which the ideas, goals & values of a capitalist world have engulfed our society appear to be so decisive & encompassing that there appears to be little hope of things changing for the better. The way the media twists every news story, every protest, & attacks every politician who offers the hope of genuine progressive change, Jeremy Corbyn & Bernie Sanders, for example, in order to suit the needs of the wealthy & the powerful, is sickening beyond measure. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had little to no time for democracy & it is a subject I contest fiercely in imaginary debates with him when I read his books. But the majority of the information we receive, especially from mainstream media outlets, is now so twisted & fashioned by power that I fear we are currently living through a time that will be looked back on as one of immense corporate propaganda. How is democracy supposed to function properly in such a case? How many people have the time or the opportunity to genuinely explore different ideas of how we could govern & arrange the society we live in or question the media & authority? These are all vital subjects that Martinez discusses in his book, & for me, as a resolute defender & believer in genuine democracy, a subject of increasing importance in this time of fake news & £350 million promises of supposed money for the NHS that was retracted even before the first birds had cleared their sleepy throats on the morning after the EU Referendum vote, True democracy, it would seem, is crumbling all around our ears. We live in strange & unnerving times, that's for sure, & this book goes a long way to explaining how we got to be here in the first place.
The Lottery of Birth
"We make choices with a brain we didn't choose."
Luck is a much ignored subject when it comes to discussions about individual responsibility, the workings of society, & crucially, health (or the lack of it) & wealth (or the lack of it). We find ourselves alive, in a body we didn't choose, with genes we had no choice over, & have to find our way with these basic tools. From the outset, luck is the most decisive factor in who we are, & for me writing this at the early stages of the 21st century & for any one reading it, in evolutionary terms, it means we have been extraordinarily lucky. But much of this is ignored, not only in secular terms but by various religions as well. It is something I am well aware of, & the role played by fortune in life is one I didn't need to read the Greek tragedians (although I love to do so!) to dimly comprehend. To be a westerner in 2019 is, in historical terms, a very fortunate time to be alive. But the lottery win I gained on one hand was hugely undermined by my being born with a chronic illness caused by a genetic mistake (let's call things by their real names) as I have cystic fibrosis. This, in terms of luck, was a very unfortunate roll of the dice. And yet, I try not to focus too much on that aspect of things. For how much worse could it have been? I could have been a Jewish citizen alive in Europe during the rise of Nazism. I could have been born a slave in Africa. I could have been born non human, into a world of factory farming, bred purely for human consumption & profit which would have meant a short life of physical torture & misery, with none of my natural instincts being allowed to be met. So, I've still been very lucky in many respects. I have a roof over my head. Most of my immediate physical needs are met (food, drinking water, a free at point of need health service. for now) & I have had what appears to me to be the insane slice of good fortune in having met the most beautiful, intelligent & warm woman to share my life with. I've also sang on the West End stage of one of the grandest London theatres in one of the world's most successful ever musicals, obtained a cultural degree at university & read the works & novels of some the greatest human minds that have lived & devoted their thoughts to posterity &, to my great satisfaction, been given devilishly good taste in all matters of music, the arts & style! And I think I've contemplated life enough to know how much of my good fortune depends rather more on me & how much of it is purely down to luck. But on a larger scale, luck is practically ignored. The wealthy look down their noses at the less fortunate, cutting public services for the vulnerable & the poor with barely a thought, somehow convincing themselves that their own material wealth is all down to themselves, without acknowledging on any level how perhaps their private school education, middle or upper class family financial security (or Bank of Mum & Dad as I believe it is now called) & all the opportunities that being born into money can give an individual over someone being born & raised, for example, in a council tower block in inner cities such as Liverpool, Manchester or Glasgow with no family money to fall back on or have as support for new ventures, etc. But this lack of insight drives many of the inequalities we see. The mainstream media are, in the main, owned by hugely wealthy individuals who want the populace to see the world & society in a certain way: the way which benefits the wealthy. So the myth of the undeserving poor, etc, takes root in the minds of the population & scapegoats are hurriedly found on which the blame for the inequalities of society can be blamed: people such as immigrants & welfare claimants. "Swamped" & "Scroungers" are not words just plucked out of thin air. They serve the neoliberal agenda of scapegoating & help divert attention from where the blame for the state of things truly lies: with the economics of greed, also known as neoliberalism. And as Martinez states, the more blame that can be placed on the shoulders of the poor, unemployed, etc, then the less is the obligation to help them.
And of course, there is a thread that continues in this way of thinking that reaches beyond that of politics. For many types of supposed spirituality take a similar view. Is not the whole idea of the punishments of Hell based on ultimate responsibility? So much for our all forgiving Father. And what about the supposed peaceful, compassionate ideas of Hinduism & Buddhism? The very idea of karma suggests ultimate responsibility on the shoulders of an individual. I've personally experienced the subtle but unmissable accusation that I have somehow deserved to have CF, probably because of some unknown misdemeanour that I have supposedly committed in a past life/lives. But, even if this is true, & it's a belief I abhor & reject unanimously, where is forgiveness & compassion in this way of things? What is the point in punishing someone for something they have no recollection of doing? It reminds me of Christianity's obsession with being born sinful. To me, these are all despicable, anti-life ideologies that are positively Kafkaesque in their absurdity, & are brought into play in part because of the desperate human need to control things. The idea that nature makes mistakes & the decisive roles that luck & chance has on our existence is too uncomfortable for most people to acknowledge. It is far easier to distance oneself & feel less sympathy for someone less fortunate if the blame for their misfortune can be laid squarely on that person's own shoulders. The same goes for an individual's lack of wealth. The pseudo-spiritualist Deepak Chopra makes statements such as, "People who have achieved an enormous amount of success are inherently very spiritual...affluence is simply our natural state." Well, that's news to me, Deepak. I didn't realise that my quest to find meaning in life, from my own personal feelings, my love, longings & wonder, to my careful, studied reading of Oscar Wilde, Nietszche, Anais Nin, etc, & my adoration of music & the arts were as nothing when compared to the compassionate, spiritual fullness that obviously led naturally to the bulging bank accounts of Piers Morgan, Katie Hopkins & Mike Ashley. Because my CF has played no part in my life chances, has it? And being born into a family whose little house in north Wales only had an outside toilet also made no difference compared to the Eton bound boys& girls & such like, with their nannies, servants, maids, private health care & private education, did it? Not that I would swap places with any of them, mind you, I doubt that any of those three would have an artistic bone between them, I am merely using these examples simply to illustrate why I agree with Raoul Martinez when he states that "luck has been the decisive force in the life of every person who has ever lived." (p. 21) But the ideologies of capitalism & neoliberalism would have us believe a very different thing, & it may well be prudent for us to remember that, as Raoul Martinez states:
"We are notes in life's melody, not its composer."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/may/07/deepak-chopra-wealthy-knows-illusion
