philosophy

Beyond OWS: Problem #3: The Age of Unreason

What is society? Or, more importantly, what’s it for? And how do we want it to be?

It seems there are precious few asking questions like these. And while the Occupy Wall Street movement appears to be rebelling against the way society is structured today, and the direction in which it’s travelling, this rebellion is only the first step. Identifying that there’s a problem is one thing, diagnosing it in detail another. And then there’s the ultimate goal of figuring out how to fix it.

In this post I offer my take on the underlying issues with our conception of society and its function that I believe underlie the Occupy Wall Street movement’s grievances, and in a future post in this series, I’ll offer some suggested alternatives that might take us in a more fruitful direction.

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By timdean, ago

Beyond OWS: Problem #1: The Market Ain’t So Free

This post is one of my series on the Occupy Wall Street movement, on the problems that I believe are underlying the protest and, at the end of the series, some proposed solutions. This post is on the first of the three core problems: that the market makes us miserable:

The Occupy Wall Street movement began as a collective expression of outrage at the current economic conditions in the United States. Crippling public and private debt, high unemployment, gaping income inequality and a recession caused by excessive borrowing and reckless behaviour on Wall Street. Yet, at the same time that many people can’t find a job, there are massive bailouts for those on Wall Street who precipitated this economic disaster.

But these are just the surface problems. While many OWS protesters are championing these issues (among others), they’re but symptoms of a far deeper malaise. If the OWS movement is to go beyond being a protest, it needs to direct its outrage not only at the present economic circumstances, but at the deeper causes of those circumstances. And that’s what this post is about.

Because economics is wonderful tool, but a horrible master. And we let it become our master.

The word “economy” originally meant “efficiency” or “frugal”, particularly in terms of management of resources. It used to be an approach. But now it’s a thing, and it’s a thing that we serve.

This is arse-backwards.

Economics is a science that helps us understand how to manage resources to reach a desired end. If people desire X, the market will often be the most efficient process to produce X to meet that desire.

But sometime around the mid-20th Century (1944, to be precise – the year in which Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was published), we let economics stop being the arbiter of the means to achieve some valued end, and opened the door for economics to become the arbiter of the values themselves.

According to this ideology (now often called ‘neoliberal’), if the market deigns not to produce some product, that’s because we, by definition, don’t value that product. Likewise, if the market encourages the production of some product, that’s because, by definition, we value that product.

This is wrong.

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By timdean, ago

Beyond Occupy Wall Street

I’ve been patiently awaiting the revolution for some years now. It’s inevitable that it was coming. The only question was when. And in what form. It seems it’s arrived, at least in its embryonic guise, in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement. But is this really the revolution? Read more…

By timdean, ago

The Burqa is Bad (But Banning it is Worse)

I oppose the wearing of the burqa – particularly the niqab, or veil – and I believe women shouldn’t wear it, or be made to wear it. I also oppose banning of the burqa or the niqab, and believe the government should not prevent people from wearing it (excepting, of course, circumstances where people need to be identified).

And these two positions aren’t even remotely contradictory.

Unfortunately, many people – particularly many on the Left – think they are contradictory, and in doing so they get themselves stuck between condemning a practice that is often oppressive to women and condemning those who call for a ban on the burqa as being racist.

However, it is quite possible to hold a clear stance against the burqa and the values it represents, and drawing a line that says the government has no right to dictate what we can and can’t wear (beyond very loose modesty requirements). Here’s how:

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By timdean, ago

London Burning

I happened to visit London for the first time only a few months ago. While there, I visited friends living in Tottenham, only blocks from the recent outbreaks of rioting and looting.

Fire fighters and riot police survey the area as fire rages through a building in Tottenham, north London on Aug. 7, 2011. A demonstration against the death of a local man turned violent and cars and shops were set ablaze. (Lewis Whyld/PA/AP)

It’s alarming to think the bustling streets, filled with families going about their business and small shops serving a plethora of wares, have been replaced by broken glass, burning police cars and hooded youths hurling bricks and looting stores.

Many have sought the roots of the London riots, often citing the police shooting of Mark Duggan. But it would be naive to think the current spate of rioting and looting, taking place across London, is entirely fuelled by outrage at a perceived case of injustice.

At the root of the London riots is a deep disaffection by many youths, a disconnection from their communities and the broader society, and a lowering of social norms that would inhibit such wildly destructive behaviour.

And it’s likewise naive to think that police action alone can contain this outbreak, or that the threat of further police action can prevent it from happening again.

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By timdean, ago

Ends and Means

I call it “pulling a Cameron,” in reference not to the present British Prime Minister, but to the broadcaster Deborah Cameron who handles the morning slot on Sydney’s ABC Radio 702.

A common refrain a few minutes in to her maddeningly predictable morning routine of following the happenings of the first several pages of the Sydney Morning Herald is to enquire of some expert or other: “what are we doing to prevent X from ever happening again?”

And by “X” I mean whatever undesirable event has appeared on the front pages, whether that’s a case of callous bullying in our schools, a death by accident or some other unsavoury turn of events.

One recent example was the tragic death of a young university student at a rural college after being thrown from an ex-racing horse that was being used to train horse riding skills. The horse was deemed safe for students yet it possessed a fierce distemper that flared on that day, throwing the student

The question posed by Cameron, seemingly predictable and justifiable in the circumstances, was along the lines of: “what are we doing to prevent more deaths of students during riding training?”

The presumption is that the outcome is unacceptable so, clearly, our current process that led to this outcome must be deficient.

Yet that’s a presumption that is unfortunately as fallacious as it is common.

For we chase outcomes on an ad hoc basis at the risk of employing processes that undermine our very intentions to produce better outcomes. In short: we focus myopically on each good or bad outcome at the danger of forgetting that it’s good processes that are of primary importance.

And even a good process – nay, the optimal process – can result in bad outcomes from time to time.

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By timdean, ago

The Limits of the Law

Alcohol can be fun stuff. But it can turn on you. Living in Sydney’s inner west, only a block from one of the highest concentration of pubs and bars in the city, I see it’s unsavoury side all-too often.

In fact, the normally convivial family-friendly disposition of Newtown’s King St turns decidedly ugly after midnight, especially on weekends. Clusters of drunken revellers, typically 20-somethings but often older, stumble around shouting, swearing, groping, imbibing kebabs of dubious repute and leaving little puddles of said kebab strategically placed on street corners.

What is truly striking is that just about everyone you encounter after midnight in the city or the inner west is in some state of drunkenness, often nearly paralytic, or as it’s commonly known around these parts: “rat-arsed.”

After midnight, our city turns into a menagerie of hominins in fancy shoes regressed to their primal roots, urged on by thoughts of sex, food and chest thumping competitiveness.

It’s undignified at best, descending into violence and public mayhem at worst.

And it exacts a cost not only in terms of throbbing heads and deep regrets the next morning. The cost is spread out on the whole of society.

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By timdean, ago

Moral Dynamics

One of the privileges of being a philosopher is you can create new terms, define them how you please, and damn be to any conventions that would have the term used otherwise. So, I’ve created a few new terms – well, at lease one is new. Here they are, in Read more…

By timdean, ago

Why Cooperate?

There’s every possibility that I’ve missed something utterly obvious, but I’ve been reading up on the fickle nature of cooperation for my thesis, and I’ve found what appears to be a gaping hole in the literature. There are countless studies that explore the challenges of encouraging cooperation – primarily via Read more…

By timdean, ago