Against the idea that neoliberalism lacks a moral core, let us turn to ideas that were developed during the Iron Age. Buddha defined the three roots of evil or poisons as: greed, hatred and delusion. Greed is also passion. Hatred is also ill will, anger and aggression. Ignorance covers indifference – this enables people to prioritize their pleasure over the suffering of millions of others. If Buddha was correct that greed, ill will and delusion are causes of our suffering and we have institutionalized them; these are matters of deep and urgent concern. Present power elites and institutions have shown themselves incapable of addressing the various crisis that now threaten humanity and the future of the biosphere. It has become obvious that those elites are themselves a large part of the problem and that the solution needs to come from somewhere else. Individual “awakening” is not enough, we require a “social” awakening. Solutions need to be worked at to overcome these poisons dominating society.
What you feel matters, what you do with your feelings even more. Living your life with greed, anger and ignorance have consequences – these emotions influence you in overt and subtle ways – down a path of unhappiness. The neoliberal project is founded on – and acts upon – the assumption that the average citizen is too confused and ignorant to really know what’s best for society or themselves. With respect to “fake news”, the common practices of social media “sharing” constitute an emerging practice that makes one an especially favorable target for neoliberal strategies of social control. A willful hostility toward established knowledge has emerged on both sides of the political spectrum, one in which every opinion on any matter is as good as every other. In a curious ruse of history, the neoliberals’ own economics of ignorance has given rise to forms of tribal epistemology in which information asymmetry and distrust of traditional information sources have propelled new forms of bigotry, lies, and fake news that poison the community.
Neoliberalism has institutionalized greed, ill will and delusion. Corporations are legally chartered so that their first responsibility is not to employees or customers nor members of society they operate within, nor the ecosystem on earth, but to their stockholders who with few exceptions are concerned only about return on investment. With respect to institutionalized ill will: Conservatives, expecting the poor to act self-reliantly, feel less personal complicity in the fact of poverty. Conservatives act differently than progressives to the phenomena associated with poverty – their point of view tends to be “mean spirited” or as “blaming the victim”. Considering the institutionalized delusion of neoliberalism: Democracy requires an activist press, to expose abuse and discuss political issues. However, major media have become profit-making institutions whose bottom-line is advertising revenue, their main concern is to do whatever maximizes those profits. It is never in their own interest to question the grip of consumerism.
Today everyone is angry, and this rage is expressed in many forms – Hindu nationalism, fascism, the Christian right, anarchic violence and others. The Brexit referendum campaign – just like the U.S. election – has boiled with populist anger, fear-mongering by politicians, hostility towards distant political elites and resurgent nationalism, and exposed a visceral feeling in the electorate that ordinary voters have lost control of the politics that shape their own lives. But nationalism is, more than ever before, a mystification, if not a dangerous fraud with its promise of making a country ‘great again’ and its demonization of the ‘other’; it conceals the real conditions of existence, and the true origins of suffering, even as it seeks to replicate the comforting balm of transcendental ideals within a bleak earthly horizon. Its political resurgence shows resentment – in this case, of people who feel left behind by the globalized economy.
The historian Jennifer Burns has this wonderful insight when she describes Ayn Rand as ‘the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right’ – justifying a certain picture of the world is learned at a very early age, that leads them down the path to narcissism. Because the current culture gives them just enough to behave in ways that the neoliberals describe as being the ideal entrepreneur of the self, confusing freedom with imaginary lack of constraint, and so on and so forth. No one has to read Foucault. Just remember watching The Apprentice, or spend a little time on Facebook. Philip Mirowski traces the origins of neoliberalism to Friedrich Hayek and a European thought collective called The Mont Pelerin Society, who saw markets as information processors, superior to human reason. When neoliberalism, as a real-world political project, expects ignorance of the masses, then spreading confusion becomes an acceptable mode of operation, and lying is not necessarily a bad thing.1
Rand acolytes were spread throughout the world of business during the 1980s and ’90s, but the tech gurus of Silicon Valley have been an especially rich source of Ayn Rand fandom. At their core, Rand’s philosophies suggest that it’s O.K. to be selfish, greedy, and self-interested, especially in business, and that a win-at-all-costs mentality is just the price of changing the norms of society. Trump is in most ways a Rand villain – a businessman who relies on cronyism and manipulation of government, who advocates interference in so-called “free markets,” who bullies big companies to do his bidding, who doesn’t read. His cabinet and donor lists are full of Rand fans who support neoliberal cruelty. This cruelty, through which feelings of resentment, fear, anger, and loathing are enacted against the weak, who are considered a drain on the worthy. Cracking down on welfare “cheats,” “illegal” immigrants, and homeless “vagrants” can become a form of public satisfaction.
An important part of genuine education is realizing that many of the things we think are natural and inevitable (and therefore should accept) are in fact conditioned (and therefore can be changed). The world doesn’t need to be the way it is; there are other possibilities. The present role of the media is to foreclose most of those possibilities by confining public awareness and discussion within narrow limits. With few exceptions, the world’s developed (or “economized”) societies are now dominated by a power elite composed of governments and large corporations including the major media. People move seamlessly from each of these institutions to the other, because there is little difference in their worldview or goals: primarily economic expansion. Politics remains “the shadow cast by big business over society,” as John Dewey once put it. The role of the media in this unholy alliance is to “normalize” this situation, so that we accept it and continue to perform our required roles, especially the frenzied production and consumption necessary to keep the economy growing.
It’s important to realize that we are not being manipulated by a clever group of powerful people who benefit from manipulating us. Rather, we are being manipulated by a deluded group of powerful people who think they benefit from it – because they buy into the basic illusion that their own well-being is separate from that of other people. They too are victims of their own propaganda, caught up in the webs of collective delusion that include virtually all of us, one of the poisons – ignorance. As the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus once said, “How do wars begin? Politicians tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read in the newspapers.” The same applies to shared fantasies such as the necessity of consumerism and perpetual economic growth, and collective repressions such as denial of impending eco-catastophe.2
The opposite of the ignorance of institutionalized neoliberalism is knowledge or awareness. Of the three passions ignorance is viewed as the worst, inhibiting our ability to follow the path that leads to the cessation of suffering. It would appear that the picture of the ordinary human condition, mired in ignorance and moved by short-term pragmatic goals, precludes such a notion of personal freedom. To repeat, on the psychological level, Shantideva tells us we have no more justification for blaming someone who harms us than for blaming a fire for causing heat or, in another example, for blaming the sky for having clouds. This line of thought reflects the view that all wrongdoing is due to ignorance.3 We must end the corrupt system of money for influence – get big money out of politics. With money comes time, access, and the corruption of representative democracy. The majority of the middle class, even many within the power elite, are ignorant of the fact that this affects their own well-being.
The opposites of the poisons of greed and anger of institutionalized neoliberalism are generosity and compassion or understanding. To counter the greed of neoliberalism it is necessary to introduce a living wage, and invest in affordable, high quality childcare and early education. The answer for compassion comes from a 1996 white paper, “Just changing the way business is done, if only by a few companies, can change the flow of wealth, ease and eliminate poverty, and leave us all with something better to worry about. Basic human needs such as food and shelter are fundamental human rights; there are more than enough resources available to go around – if we can just figure out how to share.“ In 2009 the President of the UN Assembly argued, “The anti-values of greed, individualism and exclusion should be replaced by solidarity, common good and inclusion. The objective of our economic and social activity … should be universal values that underpin our ethical and moral responsibility.”4
1 Podcast (25/Oct/2016) Interchange – Selling Ignorance: Part Two of the Way of Neoliberalism https://wfhb.org/news/interchange-selling-ignorance-part-two-of-the-way-of-neoliberalism/
2 David Loy ( 19 /Nov/2013) The Three Poisons, Institutionalized https://www.huffpost.com/entry/buddhist-three-poisons_b_4293245
3Rick Repetti. BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVES ON FREE WILL: AGENTLESS AGENCY? https://philarchive.org/archive/REPBPO-2
4 Jeff Mowat. (13/Oct/2013) Is Compassion the Antidote for Neoliberalism? https://bullshit.ist/is-compassion-the-antidote-for-neoliberalism