The solutions are right in front of us
A little while ago I mentioned the book The Rebel Sell: Why The Culture Can't Be Jammed by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.
Following in my normal pattern of getting really excited about a book, then not touching it for a while, and then picking it up again, I've been reading it during the bus commutes to work and school. There are so many points made in this book that I agree with, but the biggest one has to be about how countercultural thinking can be harmful to making any real, concrete, positive changes in society.
Here I think we can see the basic error in countercultural thinking. Countercultural rebels take the fact that social norms are enforced and interpret this as a sign that social order as a whole is a system of repression. They then interpret the punitive response elicited by the violations of these norms as confirmation of the theory. The result, too often, is simply a glamorization of antisocial-behaviour--transgression for the sake of transgression. In everyday life this is usually harmless, but politicall this mode of thinking can be disastrous. It leads countercultural activists to reject not just existing social institutions but any proposed alternative as well, on the grounds that the alternative would also need to be institutionalized and thus coercively imposed. This is what underlies the countercultural dismissal of traditional leftist politics as "merely institutional".
The tendency to reject institutional solutions to social problems leads directly to the cardinal sin of the counterculture. Countercultural activists and thinkers consistently reject perfectly good solutions to concrete social problems, in the name of "deeper," "more radical" alternatives that can never be effectively implimented. As the following chapters will show, this cardinal sin contaminates every field of countercultural politics. It shows up among culture jammers and the anti-consumerism movement, among critics of the education system, in the environmentalist movement, the anti-globalization movement and the feminist movement, and among adherants of "New Age" religious beliefs. By rejecting any proposal that stops short of a total transformation of human consciousness and culture, countercultural activists too often wind up exacerbating precisely the problems they are hoping to solve.
I had to read this over a couple of times.
First of all, there are clearly generalizations at work here when naming all those movements. Certainly, not all environmentalists or feminists are entirely focused on completely overhauling human consciousness. But if you take those movements to the extreme, they sort of are. For men and woman to be equal, for everyone to treat the environment with respect, many mindsets would have to change.
And that's extremely difficult. Probably even impossible. So what can we do?
More and more, I'm thinking that the best way to make the world a better place is by achieving those concrete things which help the causes in question.
If parents everywhere got a decent amount of paid maternity/paternity leave, and had access to safe, affordable childcare, lives would be improved immensely. Very few companies, especially ones whose employees are paid minimum wage, will voluntarily step up and provide these things. That's why it's imperative for the government to make them possible for citizens.
The idea that you as an individual can save the world by voting with your dollars is complete and utter bullshit. It may do some good to boycott a company that pollutes or support ones that do good things, but it's peanuts compared to the things that governments on all levels could do to make things better. While everyone and every company has their unique interests and motivations, and some may align with what's in the public interest, it won't happen in most cases if there's profit or incentives to do otherwise.
It's the responsibility for the government to reign in people and companies, prevent them from doing harm, and create incentives for them to act in the public interest.
I mean, that's why we have laws in the first place, isn't it? Of course everyone knows it's wrong to kill people, but having laws and consequences for killing provide incentives for people not to kill or commit other crimes.
On the cover of the Globe and Mail (...last weekend? I think?) there was a big article talking about how many Canadians suffer from mental health issues and the healthcare system's inability to properly deal with it. The title, in nice big, bold, blue letters was:
"FACE IT. FIX IT. FUND IT."
It's so very simple. If more people adopted that philosophy, I'd feel a lot more secure about the future.
The goal of a lot of environmentalists of the PETA-variety (but they're not environmentalists so much as cracked-out animal rights activists, IMNSHO) seems to be to completely and utterly change the way people see the world and animals. I don't think it's anything but realistic to say that this is impossible. I believe that Moxy Früvous's "Bargainville" album is amazing, that everyone should love it and that you're crazy if you don't, but I have to accept that there are not a lot of people who would agree with me.
What could be successful, is making changes towards sustainable, balanced living that does not harm local or global environments, endanger species or ecosystems (and enforcing laws against animal cruelty on the animal rights front).
With feminism, it's unlikely that one can completely rid the world of sexism and misogyny, as that would involve everyone agreeing on topics of gender, equality, sex, biology and economics. Not gonna happen.
But you know what could happen? Making sure proper health and sex education for kids, birth control, access to safe abortions, paid maternity/paternity leaves, safe and affordable childcare, readily and easily available to those who want/need them. The majority of people in poverty are women, and if everyone had access to those things listed above, I think there's a very good chance that could change.
[In some ways, some of these issues, like women's rights, health and the environment, may arguably coincide in their goals. Overpopulation, AIDS, the right to control one's own body...think about it, people. What's one solution they all have in common? CONDOMS! (Well, condoms and education, but especially condoms.) CONDOMS CAN SAVE THE WORLD, people! (Anyone know if they make biodegradable condoms? Because that would be even better.) But, I digress.]
With feminism, we spend so much time talking about women's bodies and what we think about them, how they're displayed, viewed, objectified, etc. I get why that is, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if those issues would start to fade if we had those concrete solutions, those things that would help make us equal in the world. If the majority of women were truly equal to men in the world, I think the sexist and misogynistic ideas out there would start to fade.
You may think it's counter-intuitive, but that's partly why I think the whole Project Girl Wonder thing is fantastic. Of course, there is a lot of talk about women's bodies on that site. But the Project itself picked one, concrete example of injustice in comics and demanded something be done about it.
And you know what? Girl Wonder's Robin suit is in the Batcave now*, as asked for, and on top of that, Stephanie Brown was retconned back into existence. *Not that the collection of former sidekicks' costumes should necessarily be celebrated as a sign of good mental health on the part of Batman, but otherwise it's a good sign.
You might look at all of that and think it's just another example of counterculturalism (read: fanservice to entitled loudmouth fanbrats), but I disagree. If you think of DC comics as the institution, Girl-Wonder.org acted as an organized party campaigning for change within that institution. It's not an exact parallel to democratic countries or regions, but it's the same principal.
To put it simply: it's an example of good shit getting done by people who make a sensible effort.
If we just give up, if we don't vote, if we don't ask and demand for better, even if you're doing so out of protest or being dissatisfied to the point of not wanting to participate at all...you can dress up your apathy and call it protest or being countercultural, but it won't get us anywhere.
Following in my normal pattern of getting really excited about a book, then not touching it for a while, and then picking it up again, I've been reading it during the bus commutes to work and school. There are so many points made in this book that I agree with, but the biggest one has to be about how countercultural thinking can be harmful to making any real, concrete, positive changes in society.
Here I think we can see the basic error in countercultural thinking. Countercultural rebels take the fact that social norms are enforced and interpret this as a sign that social order as a whole is a system of repression. They then interpret the punitive response elicited by the violations of these norms as confirmation of the theory. The result, too often, is simply a glamorization of antisocial-behaviour--transgression for the sake of transgression. In everyday life this is usually harmless, but politicall this mode of thinking can be disastrous. It leads countercultural activists to reject not just existing social institutions but any proposed alternative as well, on the grounds that the alternative would also need to be institutionalized and thus coercively imposed. This is what underlies the countercultural dismissal of traditional leftist politics as "merely institutional".
The tendency to reject institutional solutions to social problems leads directly to the cardinal sin of the counterculture. Countercultural activists and thinkers consistently reject perfectly good solutions to concrete social problems, in the name of "deeper," "more radical" alternatives that can never be effectively implimented. As the following chapters will show, this cardinal sin contaminates every field of countercultural politics. It shows up among culture jammers and the anti-consumerism movement, among critics of the education system, in the environmentalist movement, the anti-globalization movement and the feminist movement, and among adherants of "New Age" religious beliefs. By rejecting any proposal that stops short of a total transformation of human consciousness and culture, countercultural activists too often wind up exacerbating precisely the problems they are hoping to solve.
I had to read this over a couple of times.
First of all, there are clearly generalizations at work here when naming all those movements. Certainly, not all environmentalists or feminists are entirely focused on completely overhauling human consciousness. But if you take those movements to the extreme, they sort of are. For men and woman to be equal, for everyone to treat the environment with respect, many mindsets would have to change.
And that's extremely difficult. Probably even impossible. So what can we do?
More and more, I'm thinking that the best way to make the world a better place is by achieving those concrete things which help the causes in question.
If parents everywhere got a decent amount of paid maternity/paternity leave, and had access to safe, affordable childcare, lives would be improved immensely. Very few companies, especially ones whose employees are paid minimum wage, will voluntarily step up and provide these things. That's why it's imperative for the government to make them possible for citizens.
The idea that you as an individual can save the world by voting with your dollars is complete and utter bullshit. It may do some good to boycott a company that pollutes or support ones that do good things, but it's peanuts compared to the things that governments on all levels could do to make things better. While everyone and every company has their unique interests and motivations, and some may align with what's in the public interest, it won't happen in most cases if there's profit or incentives to do otherwise.
It's the responsibility for the government to reign in people and companies, prevent them from doing harm, and create incentives for them to act in the public interest.
I mean, that's why we have laws in the first place, isn't it? Of course everyone knows it's wrong to kill people, but having laws and consequences for killing provide incentives for people not to kill or commit other crimes.
On the cover of the Globe and Mail (...last weekend? I think?) there was a big article talking about how many Canadians suffer from mental health issues and the healthcare system's inability to properly deal with it. The title, in nice big, bold, blue letters was:
"FACE IT. FIX IT. FUND IT."
It's so very simple. If more people adopted that philosophy, I'd feel a lot more secure about the future.
The goal of a lot of environmentalists of the PETA-variety (but they're not environmentalists so much as cracked-out animal rights activists, IMNSHO) seems to be to completely and utterly change the way people see the world and animals. I don't think it's anything but realistic to say that this is impossible. I believe that Moxy Früvous's "Bargainville" album is amazing, that everyone should love it and that you're crazy if you don't, but I have to accept that there are not a lot of people who would agree with me.
What could be successful, is making changes towards sustainable, balanced living that does not harm local or global environments, endanger species or ecosystems (and enforcing laws against animal cruelty on the animal rights front).
With feminism, it's unlikely that one can completely rid the world of sexism and misogyny, as that would involve everyone agreeing on topics of gender, equality, sex, biology and economics. Not gonna happen.
But you know what could happen? Making sure proper health and sex education for kids, birth control, access to safe abortions, paid maternity/paternity leaves, safe and affordable childcare, readily and easily available to those who want/need them. The majority of people in poverty are women, and if everyone had access to those things listed above, I think there's a very good chance that could change.
[In some ways, some of these issues, like women's rights, health and the environment, may arguably coincide in their goals. Overpopulation, AIDS, the right to control one's own body...think about it, people. What's one solution they all have in common? CONDOMS! (Well, condoms and education, but especially condoms.) CONDOMS CAN SAVE THE WORLD, people! (Anyone know if they make biodegradable condoms? Because that would be even better.) But, I digress.]
With feminism, we spend so much time talking about women's bodies and what we think about them, how they're displayed, viewed, objectified, etc. I get why that is, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if those issues would start to fade if we had those concrete solutions, those things that would help make us equal in the world. If the majority of women were truly equal to men in the world, I think the sexist and misogynistic ideas out there would start to fade.
You may think it's counter-intuitive, but that's partly why I think the whole Project Girl Wonder thing is fantastic. Of course, there is a lot of talk about women's bodies on that site. But the Project itself picked one, concrete example of injustice in comics and demanded something be done about it.
And you know what? Girl Wonder's Robin suit is in the Batcave now*, as asked for, and on top of that, Stephanie Brown was retconned back into existence. *Not that the collection of former sidekicks' costumes should necessarily be celebrated as a sign of good mental health on the part of Batman, but otherwise it's a good sign.
You might look at all of that and think it's just another example of counterculturalism (read: fanservice to entitled loudmouth fanbrats), but I disagree. If you think of DC comics as the institution, Girl-Wonder.org acted as an organized party campaigning for change within that institution. It's not an exact parallel to democratic countries or regions, but it's the same principal.
To put it simply: it's an example of good shit getting done by people who make a sensible effort.
If we just give up, if we don't vote, if we don't ask and demand for better, even if you're doing so out of protest or being dissatisfied to the point of not wanting to participate at all...you can dress up your apathy and call it protest or being countercultural, but it won't get us anywhere.