Neoliberalism, Henry Spencer, Darwin misread, Nudge Theory and the UK's DWP as doctrinal extremists.

Let me get straight to the point here.

Survival of the Fittest is a caricature, one which when taken literally and applied to human social behavioiur voids the evidence base and replaces it with a violent mindset that runs counter to sociality as a ,marker of our species.

Human Rights are privileges granted to or negotiated for by the grass roots from Power within a violent hierarchy They can be withdrawn at a whim. As they frequently are. As the DWP in the UK are so ably demonstrating in their treatment of disabled and vulnerable people.

Our most natural expectations relate to life within a egalitarian setting, which is our innate biological mandate. More on that below.

Respect, love, kindness, connection, empathy.

Human Rights Law does not protect or nurture, it is a sop to the concept of Justice rather than a robust framework for justice.

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NeoLiberalism, Henry Spencer, Nudge and the DWP

”One of the most famous proponents of individualism as a moral project was Herbert Spence.

His ideas on liberty were derived from natural science (he originated the term ‘survival of the fittest’ some time before Darwin published ‘On The Origin of Species’). Individuals and societies prospered alike according to competition, he argued. In nature those who worked and overcame the harsh natural environment flourished, whilst the weak lost out.

In the modern world economic competition took the place of nature. Pure liberty consisted in everyone exerting his or her energies for private selfish ends; the outcome of self interest would result in harmony, the free market naturally supplying all the needs and wants of a diverse population.

Every citizen had a moral duty to better himself independent of of hindrance or help alike from the state. Any attempt by the state to help the poor might seem benevolent, but it would in fact have disastrous consequences…

To help the poor then would diminish liberty, and liberty of action in the economic field was the ‘vital’ condition of a progressive society driven forward by the unrestrained exertions of its members. Any theory of freedom should contain the freedom to fail, even if it was painful to members of society to witness the deprivation of their neighbours.

Relief of poverty would make the lowest members of society dependent and therefore less inspired to work hard.

’Society in its corporate capacity, cannot without immediate or remoter disaster interfere with the play of these opposed principles under which every species has reached such fitness for its mode of life as it possesses, and under which it maintains its fitness.

Written in the age of Darwin, these words had an immediate resonance. They were also familiar from the language of modern political economy and Protestantism: that of self-reliance and self-abnegation in the present for benefits in the future. It was the idea that the world was so ordered that the industrious enjoyed the fruits of their diligence while the slothful and immoral were visibly punished in this life by the rags of poverty.”

Page 152, What Price Liberty by Ben Wilson…

So there you have it, the core psycho-social justification for the impositions of the DWP, Nudge Theory; saving the tax payer money, ‘improving peoples behaviour’ are merely the device used to cover it.  

The poor are to be punished for being poor by removing any support provided by the State, the seriously wealthy to be rewarded with access to Power to impose their will which necessarily meets their needs above all others…. the fact that poverty is an outcome of unjust social systems, (unjust because they are rigged by powerful networks of established power, economic, military and religious/ideological to meet the needs of the powerful - their need to maintain dominance over the State and the people)  is ignored, and denied.

”Liberty was the space that modern man had to expend his energies and talents; the outcome was natural justice - survival of the fittest.”

This remains as the base of Neoliberalism, and is also a widely indoctrinated and internalised value - survival of the fittest, adversarial competition, alpha male, nationalism, flag waving, misogyny - across the grass roots of the dominant culture, and it is, of course, utterly false and deeply toxic. It is also a frequently applied post hoc justification for immense cruelty.

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So what to do with all this?

Huge question, and here are a few rapidly written ideas to start working with...

The main thing is adult child relationships, and how we heal those traditional dynamics of parent as authority, and child as possession, or subject.

England still refuses to ban parents from slapping children.

That says a lot, to me, about the social and institutional psychology of England, and all that English power has influenced.

The healing is under way. It is slowly emerging, as accurate information, science and experience, is being shared across the grass roots, through a myriad of communication channels. Shared knowledge, shared insight helps with the recovery process.

On a personal level one has to focus on evidence, and be able to discern disinformation, deliberate or misled. That is key, learning how to think for one self, and how to question, check, confirm, debunk - that is for the education system and parents to deal with in the first instance... but it is also a best standard practice when using the net or a library...

Abuses are being confronted,all over the world, always by the Survivors in the first instance, and their advocates, and with some minimal support from Society and the grass roots, who tend not to get too involved - eg: the Vatican and other Institutions issues with protecting their status by covering up abuse - that should be a matter for ALL people, not just those directly involved... Iraq War Crimes, again a matter for ALL tax payers in the UK, whose taxes funded those War Crimes.

We need to shift away a little form single issues, and zone in on bullying behaviours in any institutional setting and confront them for what they are. and at work, at play.....

Racsim, Sexism, Genderism, Sectarianism, adversarial behaviour, it's all bullying.... each with it's own set of false assumptions and falsified rationalisations. An action rationalised by some text, that ignores or seeks to mitigate the value of the harms caused is falsified....

Indoctrination of children must be outlawed, it must be rejected as the intrusion into the mind of the child,  abrogating the rights of the child.

Change comes over generations, each must put their back into the oars and row that boat further on it's voyage...

There's more too; permaculture, ceasing intrusions into the lands of aboriginal peoples, acknowledging those cultures, and their land tenure as valid and sustainable human cultures. Learning more about the biology of egalitarian behaviour, of mutual nurture systems, our most basic mode of life…

I see this work, this healing, this struggle and effort in the historical context, going back to before writing, way back before Empires, Kings, further back to ancient aboriginal cultures world wide who lived sustainably, in good health, for hundreds of thousands of years and who, in spite of being called 'primitive', nurtured the world whey were part of... enhanced it.... they were gardener/gatherer/hunters ..... they sowed wild seeds of all available food plants as they roamed,. reseeding each patch, ensuring future food supplies.... obviously.... what matters is that their relationships were unsullied by oppression, and tended to be closer to the biological mandate for sustainable healthy human social behaviour....

It is those relationships we need to re-awaken, and they will then alter the existing culture, over time....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. 

All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find, and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. 

The rest is easy.

The Neo-Liberal Revolution: indoctrination and economic sleight of hand at home, violence abroad.

When Teresa May and David Cameron spout off about British values and then claim that those values are Democracy, Tolerance, Rule of Law, whilst they flout all three on a regular basis, one wonders what do they really intend. Especially when they are unable (or unwilling) to explain it in any logically meaningful manner.

Speaking to school leavers from varied ethnic backgrounds, young people who have conversations across the globe without the adults interjecting, people who see that underneath all national identities we are human, people who understand that being humane is the first and only value of any real importance, young people who see that they are being targeted by these claims of British values; what they see is an attempt to create division amongst their contemporaries, to build a form of Capitalist Neo-Liberal Nationalism, that equates the flag and what it symbolises with ‘hard working families’ and ‘tolerance of others’, the right to own a home (to be indebted for most of ones life), the rule of brute force in International Politics (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Northern Ireland)… what they see is a demand that they adopt values they do not hold, values that are inhumane, that are at the root of the war mongering the British Government is engaged in.

Tolerance, to tolerate suggests that those being tolerated are lessor, different, other. You will be tolerated as long as you toe the line and abandon your own sense of self in favour of the British Power Establishment.

Democracy?

With 21% of the electorate giving total Power to an ideological band of robber barons actively dismantling the social contract that we care for the vulnerable in our Society, without the profit motive, and handing it to their friends to be turned to profit?

Shamocracy!

British values in action, as by the evidence of the behaviour of the British Government:

British values – collusion with violent Militia, in Northern Ireland, in Syria, in Libya and elsewhere.

British Values – protecting predatory pedophiles from public prosecution in order to protect the Power Establishment?

British Values – Zenophobia stirred up by UKIP, the Daily Mail and others..

British Values – Fracking ....

British Values – Trident ... as a 'deterrent', worthless and useless in practice.

British Values – Institutional power over a people.

British Values – low wages, subsidised by the tax payer, to improve profitability of British Corporations.

British Values – a people coerced into debt through indoctrination, and economic sleight of hand, (right to buy, tax subsidies for mortgages) that owning a home is more important than spending time with one’s children.

British Values – children cared for by well trained and well paid nannies for the wealthy rather than by their parents, and the children of the poor cared for by low paid, ill-trained childcare workers working for private enterprise.

British Values – the elderly set aside from societal engagement and participation, held in ‘care homes’ run as profit centers.

British Values – using the Rule of Law to abuse, control, dominate and coerce the population.

And then there are human values…

..although a human type of education is here to stay, it is most certainly not the prevailing type of education. So I would like to take a look at the two polar extremes of our modes of education and at the politics that is implicit in each of them.

Before I go any further, I should say what I mean by the word ‘politics’. I am not at all thinking of political parties, or government organisations. I am using the term in it’s modern sense. We hear talk of ‘the politics of the family’ or ‘the politics of psychotherapy’ or ‘sexual politics’. In this present day sense, I believe that the word ‘politics’ has to do with power or control in relationships, and the extent to which persons strive to gain such power – or to relinquish it. It has to do with the way decisions are made. Who makes them? Where is the locus, or center, of decision making power? Politics concerns the effects of such power oriented actions on individuals and systems.

If we think of the political characteristics of education, the traditional mode is at one end of a continuum, and a person centered approach at the other.

The traditional mode:

1. The teachers are the possessors of knowledge, the students the expected recipients.

2. The lecture, or some means of verbal instruction, is the major areas of getting knowledge into the recipients. The examination measures the extent to which the students have received it.

3. The teachers are the possessors of power, the students are the ones who obey.

4. Rule by Authority is the accepted policy in the classroom.

The person centered mode.

1. The leaders, or persons who are perceived as authority figures, are sufficiently secure within themselves and in their relationships to others that they experience an essential trust in the capacity of others to think for themselves, to learn for themselves.

2. The facilitating persons share with others – students, and possibly also parents and community members- the responsibility for the learning process.

3. The focus of the learning center is primarily on fostering the continuing process of learning. The content of the learning, whilst significant, falls into a secondary place.

4. The discipline necessary to reach students goals is a self discipline, and is recognised and accepted by the learners as being their individual responsibilities. Self discipline replaces external discipline.”

This was written by Carl Rogers between 1972 and 1979.


In the late 70s and early 80s, as the person centered approach was spreading across the UK. Keith Joseph’s concern in 1984 was that people should be educated to ‘know their place’. To that end he redirected Educational policy along ideological lines, to ensure that the concerns of power and the 'economy' as understood by power were to be promoted, rather than in the best interests of our children as people in development.  "Evolving Consumers'as a technical term for children.

Neo-liberal revolutions at home were to be crafted through indoctrination, and economic falsehoods and gimmicks, as opposed to the imposition of Neo-Liberal revolution through violence, as in Chile and as so many other cases reveal.

Thatcher had a ‘soft spot’ for Pinochet. David Cameron was sent to South Africa to do her business with the Apartheid Regime. Tony Blair reworked the meaning of Labour to integrate Neo-liberalist ideology into it’s executive behaviour.

That concern remains present in current education, in much mainstream media and in politics. This concern is what drives the so-called ‘Greek Debt Crisis’ which is in truth a crisis for the IMF in that it’s imposition of Neo-Liberal Economics breaches Human Rights Law, is causing real harm to real people, and is therefore illegal. (the law under which these loans are set up is English Contract Law). Iraq was an illegal war of aggression. So too the bombing of Libya.

Power Rules and the people must submit.

The fact that Power uses our taxes is besides the point, is not up for rational discussion, let alone any rational discourse based on the evidence of adverse outcomes of the uses to which the Executive puts those taxes, which are after all a shared community resource.




Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe