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Back in the early 2020’s I became vocal about my shared concerns on state of the economy.
Global events - especially Covid, and the George Floyd response - collided with my own personal experiences of injustice, and this amplified in such a way that it permanently shifted my worldview.
But instead of feeling despair or defeated, I began to speak. I used my voice in a way I had never done so before. And it didn’t matter to me whether I was being acknowledged - I said what I had to say, and I knew I would be heard somewhere, and things began to align from there.
Today, I don’t feel victorious. But I do feel heard. Because when I started speaking, particularly on this platform, the majority of my connections were immersed in corporate speech. Now, you are all overwhelmingly economic and social justice practitioners.
Our collective voices have influenced institutions and corporations. They are moving very differently now than 7 or 8 years ago.
This may only be a shift of a few degrees. The pace of change feels painfully slow at that level. And yet, look at the effect around the world. Ordinary people are thinking for themselves, and pushing back. ‘No, we don’t want this’
‘We don’t want war’
‘We don’t want division’
‘We don’t want to see children harmed’
‘We don’t want to see people punished for poverty’
Despite these ‘solutions’ to the world’s problems are being violently forced on us from the top down, the majority of the world’s people are saying ‘no’ to these events. Whether we admit it or now, there is a bottom-up influence occurring.
What does this have to do with the economy?
The whole idea of an economy completely depends on us as its functionaries. A rigid model requires us to act (co-operate) in very specific ways, whether through our jobs, our consumption and other actions that play out in society. This cooperation could be pro social or anti social, depending on what the economy needs. The model demands our participation, to feed, fuel and perpetuate it.
Today, a news story states that [quote] “The economy has flatlined”, straight from the mouth of a high profile politician. This language chimes with my personal perspective about the global economy, and that is “The economy is on life support”.
Of course, the economy is not a living entity. Recently, a respectable speaker likened the global economy to Frankenstein’s Monster. The economy is an inorganic system, although everything it relies on is in fact organic. Us included.
The global economic model is a complex machine, built over time, to benefit a small group of people at the expense of everyone and everything else on the planet. It is likely having the wrong operating system installed on a valued piece of hardware.
If you are paying attention to what is happening around the world, you will see that the survival of this economic model depends on these events. This makes me wary of anyone calling for the economy to be ‘saved’.
Instead, I am leaning towards those calling for the economic model to be replaced.
It is a fossil fuel based economy - premised on extraction at all costs - the most polluting, destructive and problematic substance on Earth. Correction - commodification and glorification of this resource has led to extraction for the sake of wealth, and waste is not factored in anywhere when we talk about its usage. How much of this (especially oil) ends up in the sea? How much of it do we burn way beyond our basic needs? Which nations are guilty of overconsumption whilst others don’t have enough. Whose share of resources have we taken, leaving them under resourced?
But in contrast, which nations are moving away from fossil fuels? Why and how are they doing this? How can they inspire other nations to use this precious time to transition to renewables, and how could we make this shift ethically?
How would the world be different if the global economy was not overwhelmingly fossil fuel based? What would need to change?
If you also think this way and you have questions - big or small - I would love to hear from you!
*I hope you have found this post insightful to read. I do not use AI to write my content, all my work is authentically mine!
*Photo by Sankalp Mudaliar on Unsplash, of an oilfield. Chosen due to its likeness to puppetry and reference to machinery, features I feel help to perceive ‘the economy’.
Global events - especially Covid, and the George Floyd response - collided with my own personal experiences of injustice, and this amplified in such a way that it permanently shifted my worldview.
But instead of feeling despair or defeated, I began to speak. I used my voice in a way I had never done so before. And it didn’t matter to me whether I was being acknowledged - I said what I had to say, and I knew I would be heard somewhere, and things began to align from there.
Today, I don’t feel victorious. But I do feel heard. Because when I started speaking, particularly on this platform, the majority of my connections were immersed in corporate speech. Now, you are all overwhelmingly economic and social justice practitioners.
Our collective voices have influenced institutions and corporations. They are moving very differently now than 7 or 8 years ago.
This may only be a shift of a few degrees. The pace of change feels painfully slow at that level. And yet, look at the effect around the world. Ordinary people are thinking for themselves, and pushing back. ‘No, we don’t want this’
‘We don’t want war’
‘We don’t want division’
‘We don’t want to see children harmed’
‘We don’t want to see people punished for poverty’
Despite these ‘solutions’ to the world’s problems are being violently forced on us from the top down, the majority of the world’s people are saying ‘no’ to these events. Whether we admit it or now, there is a bottom-up influence occurring.
What does this have to do with the economy?
The whole idea of an economy completely depends on us as its functionaries. A rigid model requires us to act (co-operate) in very specific ways, whether through our jobs, our consumption and other actions that play out in society. This cooperation could be pro social or anti social, depending on what the economy needs. The model demands our participation, to feed, fuel and perpetuate it.
Today, a news story states that [quote] “The economy has flatlined”, straight from the mouth of a high profile politician. This language chimes with my personal perspective about the global economy, and that is “The economy is on life support”.
Of course, the economy is not a living entity. Recently, a respectable speaker likened the global economy to Frankenstein’s Monster. The economy is an inorganic system, although everything it relies on is in fact organic. Us included.
The global economic model is a complex machine, built over time, to benefit a small group of people at the expense of everyone and everything else on the planet. It is likely having the wrong operating system installed on a valued piece of hardware.
If you are paying attention to what is happening around the world, you will see that the survival of this economic model depends on these events. This makes me wary of anyone calling for the economy to be ‘saved’.
Instead, I am leaning towards those calling for the economic model to be replaced.
It is a fossil fuel based economy - premised on extraction at all costs - the most polluting, destructive and problematic substance on Earth. Correction - commodification and glorification of this resource has led to extraction for the sake of wealth, and waste is not factored in anywhere when we talk about its usage. How much of this (especially oil) ends up in the sea? How much of it do we burn way beyond our basic needs? Which nations are guilty of overconsumption whilst others don’t have enough. Whose share of resources have we taken, leaving them under resourced?
But in contrast, which nations are moving away from fossil fuels? Why and how are they doing this? How can they inspire other nations to use this precious time to transition to renewables, and how could we make this shift ethically?
How would the world be different if the global economy was not overwhelmingly fossil fuel based? What would need to change?
If you also think this way and you have questions - big or small - I would love to hear from you!
*I hope you have found this post insightful to read. I do not use AI to write my content, all my work is authentically mine!
*Photo by Sankalp Mudaliar on Unsplash, of an oilfield. Chosen due to its likeness to puppetry and reference to machinery, features I feel help to perceive ‘the economy’.
