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Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Technocracy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

Technocracy is a proposed system of government in which the decision-maker or makers are selected on the basis of their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or technical knowledge. This system explicitly contrasts with representative democracy, the notion that elected representatives should be the primary decision-makers in government, though it does not necessarily imply eliminating elected representatives. Decision-makers are selected on the basis of specialized knowledge and performance, rather than political affiliations, parliamentary skills, or popularity.

The term technocracy was originally used to signify the application of the scientific method to solving social problems. In its most extreme form, technocracy is an entire government running as a technical or engineering problem and is mostly hypothetical. In more practical use, technocracy is any portion of a bureaucracy that is run by technologists. A government in which elected officials appoint experts and professionals to administer individual government functions and recommend legislation can be considered technocratic. Some uses of the word refer to a form of meritocracy, where the ablest are in charge, ostensibly without the influence of special interest groups. Critics have suggested that a "technocratic divide" challenges more participatory models of democracy, describing these divides as "efficacy gaps that persist between governing bodies employing technocratic principles and members of the general public aiming to contribute to government decision making".

History of the term

The term technocracy is derived from the Greek words τέχνη, tekhne meaning skill and κράτος, kratos meaning power, as in governance, or rule. William Henry Smyth, a California engineer, is usually credited with inventing the word technocracy in 1919 to describe "the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their servants, the scientists and engineers", although the word had been used before on several occasions Smyth used the term Technocracy in his 1919 article "'Technocracy'—Ways and Means to Gain Industrial Democracy", in the journal Industrial Management (57). Smyth's usage referred to Industrial democracy: a movement to integrate workers into decision making through existing firms or revolution.

In the 1930s, through the influence of Howard Scott and the technocracy movement he founded, the term technocracy came to mean, 'government by technical decision making', using an energy metric of value. Scott proposed that money be replaced by energy certificates denominated in units such as ergs or joules, equivalent in total amount to an appropriate national net energy budget, and then distributed equally among the North American population, according to resource availability.There is in common usage found the derivative term technocrat. The word technocrat can refer to someone exercising governmental authority because of their knowledge, or "a member of a powerful technical elite", or "someone who advocates the supremacy of technical experts". McDonnell and Valbruzzi define a prime minister or minister as a technocrat if "at the time of his/her appointment to government, he/she: has never held public office under the banner of a political party; is not a formal member of any party; and is said to possess recognized non-party political expertise which is directly relevant to the role occupied in government". In Russia, the President of Russia has often nominated ministers based on technical expertise from outside political circles, and these have been referred to as "technocrats".

Precursors

Before the term technocracy was coined, technocratic or quasi-technocratic ideas involving governance by technical experts were promoted by various individuals, most notably early socialist theorists such as Henri de Saint-Simon. This was expressed by the belief in state ownership over the economy, with the function of the state being transformed from one of pure philosophical rule over men into a scientific administration of things and a direction of processes of production under scientific management. According to Daniel Bell:

"St. Simon's vision of industrial society, a vision of pure technocracy, was a system of planning and rational order in which society would specify its needs and organize the factors of production to achieve them."

Citing the ideas of St. Simon, Bell comes to the conclusion that the "administration of things" by rational judgement is the hallmark of technocracy.

Alexander Bogdanov, a Russian scientist and social theorist, also anticipated a conception of technocratic process. Both Bogdanov's fiction and his political writings, which were highly influential, suggest that he expected a coming revolution against capitalism to lead to a technocratic society.

From 1913 until 1922, Bogdanov immersed himself in the writing of a lengthy philosophical treatise of original ideas, Tectology: Universal Organization Science. Tectology anticipated many basic ideas of systems analysis, later explored by cybernetics. In Tectology, Bogdanov proposed to unify all social, biological, and physical sciences by considering them as systems of relationships and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all systems.

Arguably, the Platonic idea of philosopher-kings represents a sort of technocracy in which the state is run by those with specialist knowledge, in this case, knowledge of the Good, rather than scientific knowledge.^{[citation needed]} The Platonic claim is that those who best understand goodness should be empowered to lead the state, as they would lead it toward the path of happiness. Whilst knowledge of the Good is different from knowledge of science, rulers are here appointed based on a certain grasp of technical skill, rather than democratic mandate.

Characteristics

Technocrats are individuals with technical training and occupations who perceive many important societal problems as being solvable with the applied use of technology and related applications. The administrative scientist Gunnar K. A. Njalsson theorizes that technocrats are primarily driven by their cognitive "problem-solution mindsets" and only in part by particular occupational group interests. Their activities and the increasing success of their ideas are thought to be a crucial factor behind the modern spread of technology and the largely ideological concept of the "information society". Technocrats may be distinguished from "econocrats" and "bureaucrats" whose problem-solution mindsets differ from those of the technocrats.

Examples

In 2013, a European Union library briefing on its legislative structure referred to the Commission as a "technocratic authority", holding "legislative monopoly" over the EU lawmaking process. The briefing suggests that this system, which elevates the European Parliament to a vetoing and amending body, was "originally rooted in the mistrust of the political process in post-war Europe". This system is unusual, since the Commission's sole right of legislative initiative is a power usually associated with Parliaments.

The former government of the Soviet Union has been referred to as a technocracy. Soviet leaders like Leonid Brezhnev often had a technical background. In 1986, 89% of Politburo members were engineers.

Leaders of the Communist Party of China used to be mostly professional engineers. According to surveys of municipal governments of cities with a population of 1 million or more in China, it has been found that over 80% of government personnel had a technical education. Under the Five-year plans of the People's Republic of China projects such as the National Trunk Highway System, the China high-speed rail system, and the Three Gorges Dam have been completed However, under Party general secretary Xi Jinping, engineers have been mostly replaced by political experts, economists and theorists, with Xi himself being the only one to have an engineering degree in the current Politburo Standing Committee.

Several governments in European parliamentary democracies have been labeled 'technocratic' based on the participation of unelected experts ('technocrats') in prominent positions. Since the 1990s, Italy has had several such governments (in Italian, governo tecnico) in times of economic or political crisis, including the formation in which economist Mario Monti presided over a cabinet of unelected professionals. The term 'technocratic' has been applied to governments where a cabinet of elected professional politicians is led by an unelected prime minister, such as in the cases of the 2011-2012 Greek government led by economist Lucas Papademos, and the Czech Republic's 2009–2010 caretaker government presided over by the state's chief statistician, Jan Fischer. In December 2013, in the framework of the national dialogue facilitated by Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, political parties in Tunisia agreed to install a technocratic government led by Mehdi Jomaa.

In the article "Technocrats: Minds Like Machines", it is stated that Singapore is perhaps the best advertisement for technocracy: the political and expert components of the governing system there seem to have merged completely. This was underlined in a 1993 article in "Wired" by Sandy Sandfort, where he describes the information technology system of the island even at that early date making it effectively intelligent.

Engineering

Following Samuel Haber, Donald Stabile argues that engineers were faced with a conflict between physical efficiency and cost efficiency in the new corporate capitalist enterprises of the late nineteenth century United States. The profit-conscious, non-technical managers of firms where the engineers work, because of their perceptions of market demand, often impose limits on the projects that engineers desire to undertake.

The prices of all inputs vary with market forces thereby upsetting the engineer's careful calculations. As a result, the engineer loses control over projects and must continually revise plans. To keep control over projects the engineer must attempt to exert control over these outside variables and transform them into constant factors.

Technocracy movement

The American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen was an early advocate of technocracy, and was involved in the Technical Alliance, as were Howard Scott and M. King Hubbert (the latter of whom later developed the theory of peak oil). Veblen believed that technological developments would eventually lead toward a socialistic reorganization of economic affairs. Veblen saw socialism as one intermediate phase in an ongoing evolutionary process in society that would be brought about by the natural decay of the business enterprise system and the rise of the engineers. Daniel Bell sees an affinity between Veblen and the Technocracy movement.

In 1932, Howard Scott and Marion King Hubbert founded Technocracy Incorporated, and proposed that money be replaced by energy certificates. The group argued that apolitical, rational engineers should be vested with authority to guide an economy into a thermodynamically balanced load of production and consumption, thereby doing away with unemployment and debt.

The technocracy movement was popular in the US for a brief period in the early 1930s, during the Great Depression. By the mid-1930s, interest in the movement was declining. Some historians have attributed the decline to the rise of Roosevelt's New Deal.

Historian William E. Akin rejects this conclusion. Instead Akin argues that the movement declined in the mid-1930s as a result of the technocrats' failure to devise a 'viable political theory for achieving change'. Akin postulates that many technocrats remained vocal and dissatisfied and often sympathetic to anti-New Deal third party efforts.

Critiques

Critics have suggested that a "technocratic divide" exists between a governing body controlled to varying extents by technocrats, and members of the general public. Technocratic divides are "efficacy gaps that persist between governing bodies employing technocratic principles and members of the general public aiming to contribute to government decision making". Technocracy privileges the opinions and viewpoints of technical experts, exalting them into a kind of aristocracy, while marginalizing the opinions and viewpoints of the general public.

As major multinational technology corporations (e.g., FAANG) swell market caps and customer counts, critiques of technocratic government in the 21st-century see its manifestation in American politics not as an "authoritarian nightmare of oppression and violence" but rather as an éminence grise: a democratic cabal directed by Mark Zuckerberg and the entire cohort of "Big Tech" executives. In his 1982 Technology and Culture journal article, "The Technocratic Image and the Theory of Technocracy", John G. Gunnell presciently writes: "...politics is increasingly subject to the influence of technological change", with specific reference to the advent of The Long Boom and the genesis of the Internet, following the 1973-1975 Recession. Gunnel goes on to add three levels of analysis that delineate technology's political influence: 1) "political power tends to gravitate towards technological elites"; 2) "technology has become autonomous" and thus impenetrable by political structures; and 3) "technology (and science) constitute a new legitimizing ideology", as well as triumphing over "tribalism, nationalism, the crusading spirit in religion, bigotry, censorship, racism, persecution, immigration and emigration restrictions, tariffs, and chauvinism". In each of the three analytical levels, Gunnell foretells of technology's infiltration of political processes, and suggests that the entanglement of the two (i.e. technology and politics) will inevitably produce power concentrations around those with advanced technological training, namely the technocrats. Forty years after the publication of Gunnell's writings, technology and government have become, for better or for worse, increasingly intertwined. Facebook in itself can be considered a technocratic microcosm, a "technocratic nation-state", with a cyberspatial population that surpasses that of any terrestrial nation. In a broader sense, critics fear that the rise of social media networks (e.g. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest), coupled with the "decline in mainstream engagement", imperil the "networked young citizen" to inconspicuous coercion and indoctrination by algorithmic mechanisms, and, less insidiously, to the persuasion of particular candidates based predominantly on "Social Media engagement".

History

From the 19th to mid-20th centuries

Karl Marx believed that science and democracy were the right and left hands of what he called the move from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. He argued that advances in science helped delegitimize the rule of kings and the power of the Christian Church.

19th-century liberals, socialists, and republicans often embraced techno-utopianism. Radicals like Joseph Priestley pursued scientific investigation while advocating democracy. Robert Owen, Charles Fourier and Henri de Saint-Simon in the early 19th century inspired communalists with their visions of a future scientific and technological evolution of humanity using reason. Radicals seized on Darwinian evolution to validate the idea of social progress. Edward Bellamy’s socialist utopia in Looking Backward, which inspired hundreds of socialist clubs in the late 19th century United States and a national political party, was as highly technological as Bellamy’s imagination. For Bellamy and the Fabian Socialists, socialism was to be brought about as a painless corollary of industrial development.

Marx and Engels saw more pain and conflict involved, but agreed about the inevitable end. Marxists argued that the advance of technology laid the groundwork not only for the creation of a new society, with different property relations, but also for the emergence of new human beings reconnected to nature and themselves. At the top of the agenda for empowered proletarians was "to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible". The 19th and early 20th century Left, from social democrats to communists, were focused on industrialization, economic development and the promotion of reason, science, and the idea of progress.

Some technological utopians promoted eugenics. Holding that in studies of families, such as the Jukes and Kallikaks, science had proven that many traits such as criminality and alcoholism were hereditary, many advocated the sterilization of those displaying negative traits. Forcible sterilization programs were implemented in several states in the United States.

H.G. Wells in works such as The Shape of Things to Come promoted technological utopianism.

The horrors of the 20th century – namely Fascist and Communist dictatorships and the world wars – caused many to abandon optimism. The Holocaust, as Theodor Adorno underlined, seemed to shatter the ideal of Condorcet and other thinkers of the Enlightenment, which commonly equated scientific progress with social progress.

From late 20th and early 21st centuries

The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.
— Ronald Reagan, The Guardian, 14 June 1989

A movement of techno-utopianism began to flourish again in the dot-com culture of the 1990s, particularly in the West Coast of the United States, especially based around Silicon Valley. The Californian Ideology was a set of beliefs combining bohemian and anti-authoritarian attitudes from the counterculture of the 1960s with techno-utopianism and support for libertarian economic policies. It was reflected in, reported on, and even actively promoted in the pages of Wired magazine, which was founded in San Francisco in 1993 and served for a number years as the "bible" of its adherents.

This form of techno-utopianism reflected a belief that technological change revolutionizes human affairs, and that digital technology in particular – of which the Internet was but a modest harbinger – would increase personal freedom by freeing the individual from the rigid embrace of bureaucratic big government. "Self-empowered knowledge workers" would render traditional hierarchies redundant; digital communications would allow them to escape the modern city, an "obsolete remnant of the industrial age".

Similar forms of "digital utopianism" has often entered in the political messages of party and social movements that point to the Web or more broadly to new media as harbingers of political and social change. Its adherents claim it transcended conventional "right/left" distinctions in politics by rendering politics obsolete. However, techno-utopianism disproportionately attracted adherents from the libertarian right end of the political spectrum. Therefore, techno-utopians often have a hostility toward government regulation and a belief in the superiority of the free market system. Prominent "oracles" of techno-utopianism included George Gilder and Kevin Kelly, an editor of Wired who also published several books.

During the late 1990s dot-com boom, when the speculative bubble gave rise to claims that an era of "permanent prosperity" had arrived, techno-utopianism flourished, typically among the small percentage of the population who were employees of Internet startups and/or owned large quantities of high-tech stocks. With the subsequent crash, many of these dot-com techno-utopians had to rein in some of their beliefs in the face of the clear return of traditional economic reality.

In the late 1990s and especially during the first decade of the 21st century, technorealism and techno-progressivism are stances that have risen among advocates of technological change as critical alternatives to techno-utopianism. However, technological utopianism persists in the 21st century as a result of new technological developments and their impact on society. For example, several technical journalists and social commentators, such as Mark Pesce, have interpreted the WikiLeaks phenomenon and the United States diplomatic cables leak in early December 2010 as a precursor to, or an incentive for, the creation of a techno-utopian transparent society. Cyber-utopianism, first coined by Evgeny Morozov, is another manifestation of this, in particular in relation to the Internet and social networking.

Principles

Bernard Gendron, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, defines the four principles of modern technological utopians in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as follows:

We are presently undergoing a (post-industrial) revolution in technology;
In the post-industrial age, technological growth will be sustained (at least);
In the post-industrial age, technological growth will lead to the end of economic scarcity;
The elimination of economic scarcity will lead to the elimination of every major social evil.

Rushkoff presents us with multiple claims that surround the basic principles of Technological Utopianism:

Technology reflects and encourages the best aspects of human nature, fostering “communication, collaboration, sharing, helpfulness, and community.”
Technology improves our interpersonal communication, relationships, and communities. Early Internet users shared their knowledge of the Internet with others around them.
Technology democratizes society. The expansion of access to knowledge and skills led to the connection of people and information. The broadening of freedom of expression created “the online world...in which we are allowed to voice our own opinions.” The reduction of the inequalities of power and wealth meant that everyone has an equal status on the internet and is allowed to do as much as the next person.
Technology inevitably progresses. The interactivity that came from the inventions of the TV remote control, video game joystick, computer mouse and computer keyboard allowed for much more progress.
Unforeseen impacts of technology are positive. As more people discovered the Internet, they took advantage of being linked to millions of people, and turned the Internet into a social revolution. The government released it to the public, and its “social side effect… [became] its main feature.”
Technology increases efficiency and consumer choice. The creation of the TV remote, video game joystick, and computer mouse liberated these technologies and allowed users to manipulate and control them, giving them many more choices.
New technology can solve the problems created by old technology. Social networks and blogs were created out of the collapse of dot.com bubble businesses’ attempts to run pyramid schemes on users.

Criticisms

Critics claim that techno-utopianism's identification of social progress with scientific progress is a form of positivism and scientism. Critics of modern libertarian techno-utopianism point out that it tends to focus on "government interference" while dismissing the positive effects of the regulation of business. They also point out that it has little to say about the environmental impact of technology and that its ideas have little relevance for much of the rest of the world that are still relatively quite poor (see global digital divide).

In his 2010 study System Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster, Canada Research Chairholder in cultural studies Imre Szeman argues that technological utopianism is one of the social narratives that prevent people from acting on the knowledge they have concerning the effects of oil on the environment.

In a controversial article "Techno-Utopians are Mugged by Reality", The Wall Street Journal explores the concept of the violation of free speech by shutting down social media to stop violence. As a result of British cities being looted consecutively, British Prime Minister David Cameron argued that the government should have the ability to shut down social media during crime sprees so that the situation could be contained. A poll was conducted to see if Twitter users would prefer to let the service be closed temporarily or keep it open so they can chat about the famous television show X-Factor. The end report showed that every Tweet opted for X-Factor. The negative social effects of technological utopia is that society is so addicted to technology that we simply can't be parted even for the greater good. While many Techno-Utopians would like to believe that digital technology is for the greater good, it can also be used negatively to bring harm to the public.

Other critics of a techno-utopia include the worry of the human element. Critics suggest that a techno-utopia may lessen human contact, leading to a distant society. Another concern is the amount of reliance society may place on their technologies in these techno-utopia settings. These criticisms are sometimes referred to as a technological anti-utopian view or a techno-dystopia.

Even today, the negative social effects of a technological utopia can be seen. Mediated communication such as phone calls, instant messaging and text messaging are steps towards a utopian world in which one can easily contact another regardless of time or location. However, mediated communication removes many aspects that are helpful in transferring messages. As it stands today, most text, email, and instant messages offer fewer nonverbal cues about the speaker’s feelings than do face-to-face encounters. This makes it so that mediated communication can easily be misconstrued and the intended message is not properly conveyed. With the absence of tone, body language, and environmental context, the chance of a misunderstanding is much higher, rendering the communication ineffective. In fact, mediated technology can be seen from a dystopian view because it can be detrimental to effective interpersonal communication. These criticisms would only apply to messages that are prone to misinterpretation as not every text based communication requires contextual cues. The limitations of lacking tone and body language in text based communication are likely to be mitigated by video and augmented reality versions of digital communication technologies.

Cancel culture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cancel culture or call-out culture is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been "cancelled". The expression "cancel culture" has mostly negative connotations and is used in debates on free speech and censorship.

The notion of cancel culture is a variant on the term call-out culture and constitutes a form of boycotting or shunning involving an individual (often a celebrity) who is deemed to have acted or spoken in a questionable or controversial manner.

Notably, many people claiming to have been "cancelled" often remain untouched and continue their careers as before. Moreover, some cancellations have also been defended as exercising free speech and promoting accountability. Others criticize cancel culture as creating a chilling effect.

Origins

The 1981 Chic album Take It Off includes the song "Your Love Is Canceled" which compares a breakup to the cancellation of TV shows. The song was written by Nile Rodgers following a bad date Rodgers had with a woman who expected him to misuse his celebrity status on her behalf. "Your Love Is Canceled" inspired screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper to include a reference to a woman being "canceled" in the 1991 film New Jack City. This usage introduced the term to African-American Vernacular English, where it eventually became more common.

"Call-out culture" has been in use since 2014 as part of the #MeToo movement.

In March 2014, activist Suey Park called out "a blatantly racist tweet about Asians" from the official Twitter account of The Colbert Report using the hashtag #cancelColbert, which generated widespread outrage against Stephen Colbert's and an even greater amount of backlash against Park, even though the Colbert Report tweet was a satirical tweet. By around 2015, the concept of canceling had become widespread on Black Twitter to refer to a personal decision, sometimes seriously and sometimes in jest, to stop supporting a person or work According to Jonah Engel Bromwich of The New York Times, this usage of cancellation indicates the "total disinvestment in something (anything)". After numerous cases of online shaming gained wide notoriety, the term cancellation was increasingly used to describe a widespread, outraged, online response to a single provocative statement, against a single target. Over time, isolated instances of cancellation became both more frequent and the mob mentality more apparent, commentators began seeing a "culture" of outrage and cancellation.

The phrase cancel culture gained popularity since late 2019, most often as a recognition that society will exact accountability for offensive conduct. More recently, the phrase has become a shorthand employed by conservatives in the United States to refer to what are perceived to be disproportionate reactions to politically incorrect speech.

Description

Merriam-Webster states that to "cancel", in this context, means "to stop giving support to [a] person". Dictionary.com, in its pop-culture dictionary, defines cancel culture as "withdrawing support for (i.e. 'canceling' ) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive." The phenomenon has occurred with both public figures and private citizens. Ligaya Mishan wrote in The New York Times, "The term is shambolically applied to incidents both online and off that range from vigilante justice to hostile debate to stalking, intimidation and harassment. ... Those who embrace the idea (if not the precise language) of canceling seek more than pat apologies and retractions, although it's not always clear whether the goal is to right a specific wrong and redress a larger imbalance of power."

Academic analysis

According to the book The Coddling of the American Mind (2018) by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and free-speech activist Greg Lukianoff, call-out culture arises from what they call "safetyism" on college campuses. Keith Hampton, professor of media studies at Michigan State University, contends that the practice contributes to the polarization of American society, but does not lead to changes in opinion. Cancel culture has been described by media studies scholar Eve Ng as "a collective of typically marginalized voices 'calling out' and emphatically expressing their censure of a powerful figure." Cultural studies scholar Frances Lee states that call-out culture leads to self-policing of "wrong, oppressive, or inappropriate" opinions. According to Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan professor of media studies, canceling someone is a form of "cultural boycott" and cancel culture is the "ultimate expression of agency" which is "born of a desire for control [as] people have limited power over what is presented to them on social media" and a need for "accountability which is not centralized".

Some academics proposed alternatives and improvements to cancel culture. Critical multiculturalism professor Anita Bright proposed "calling in" rather than "calling out" in order to bring forward the former's idea of accountability but in a more "humane, humble, and bridge-building" light. Clinical counsellor Anna Richards, who specializes in conflict mediation, says that "learning to analyze our own motivations when offering criticism" helps call-out culture work productively.

Professor Joshua Knobe, of the Philosophy Department at Yale, contends that public denunciation is not effective, and that society is too quick to pass judgement against those they view as public offenders or persona non-grata. Knobe asserts that these actions have the opposite effect on individuals and that it is best to bring attention to the positive actions in which most of society participates.

Reactions

The expression cancel culture has mostly negative connotations and is used in debates on free speech and censorship.

Former US President Barack Obama warned against social media call-out culture, saying that "People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and, you know, share certain things with you." Former US President Donald Trump also criticized cancel culture in a speech in July 2020, comparing it to totalitarianism and saying that it is a political weapon used to punish and shame dissenters by driving them from their jobs and demanding submission. He was criticized as being hypocritical for having attempted to "cancel" a number things in the past himself.

Open letter

Dalvin Brown, writing in USA Today, has described an open letter signed by 153 public figures and published in Harper's Magazine as marking a "high point" in the debate on the topic. The letter set out arguments against "an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty."

A response letter organized by lecturer Arionne Nettles, "A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate", was signed by over 160 people in academia and media and criticized the Harper's letter as a plea to end cancel culture by successful professionals with large platforms but to exclude others who have been "cancelled for generations".

American public opinion

A poll of American registered voters conducted by Morning Consult in July 2020 showed that cancel culture, defined as "the practice of withdrawing support for (or canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive", was common: 40% of respondents said they had withdrawn support from public figures and companies, including on social media, because they had done or said something considered objectionable or offensive, with 8% having engaged in this often. Behavior differed according to age, with a majority (55%) of voters 18 to 34 years old saying they have taken part in cancel culture, while only about a third (32%) of voters over 65 said they had joined a social media pile-on. Attitude towards the practice was mixed, with 44% of respondents saying they disapproved of cancel culture, 32% who approved, and 24% who did not know or had no opinion. Furthermore, 46% believed cancel culture had gone too far, with only 10% thinking it had not gone far enough. Additionally, 53% believed that people should expect social consequences for expressing unpopular opinions in public, such as those that may be construed as deeply offensive to other people.

A March 2021 poll by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll found that 64% of respondents viewed "a growing cancel culture" as a threat to their freedom, while the other 36% did not. 36% of respondents said that cancel culture is a big problem, 32% called it a moderate problem, 20% called it a small problem, and 13% said it is not a problem. 54% said they were concerned that if they expressed their opinions online, they would be banned or fired, while the other 46% said they were not concerned.

Criticism of the concept

Some journalists question the validity of cancel culture as an actual phenomenon. Danielle Kurtzleben, a political reporter for NPR, wrote in 2021 that overuse of the phrase "cancel culture" in American politics (particularly by Republicans) has made it "arguably background noise". Per Kurtzleben and others, the term has undergone semantic bleaching to lose its original meaning.

Connor Garel, writing for Vice, states that cancel culture "rarely has any tangible or meaningful effect on the lives and comfortability of the cancelled."

Historian C. J. Coventry argues that the term has been incorrectly applied, and that it more accurately reflects the propensity of people to hide historical instances of injustice:

While I agree that the line between debate and suppression is one that occasionally gets crossed by the so-called left wing, it is almost invariably true that the real cancel culture is perpetrated by those who have embraced the term. If you look through Australian history, as well as European and American history, you will find countless examples of people speaking out against injustice and being persecuted in return. I can think of a number of people in our own time who are being persecuted by supposedly democratic governments for revealing uncomfortable information.

Another historian, David Olusoga, similarly argued:

Unlike some on the left, I have never doubted that "cancel culture" exists ... The great myth about cancel culture, however, is that it exists only on the left. For the past 40 years, rightwing newspapers have ceaselessly fought to delegitimize and ultimately cancel our national broadcaster [the BBC], motivated by financial as well as political ambitions.

Indigenous governance professor and activist Pamela Palmater writes in Maclean's magazine that cancel culture differs from accountability; her article covers the public backlash surrounding Canadian politicians who vacationed during COVID-19, despite pandemic restrictions forbidding such behavior.

Former US Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia says that cancel culture is a form of free speech, and is therefore protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. According to Scalia, cancel culture can, however, interfere with the right to counsel, as some lawyers would not be willing to risk their personal and professional reputation on controversial topics.

Sarah Manavis wrote for the New Statesman magazine that while free speech advocates are more likely to make accusations of "cancel culture", criticism is part of free speech and rarely results in consequences for those in power who are criticized. She argues that social media is an extension and reincarnation of a longer tradition of expression in a liberal society, "a new space for historical power structures to be solidified" and that online criticism by people who do not hold actual power in society tends to not affect existing power structures. She adds that most prominent people who criticized public opinion as canceling still have highly profitable businesses and concludes by saying, "So even if you fear the monster under the bed, it will never do you harm. It can't, because it was never there in the first place. Repercussions rarely come for those in power. Why punch down, when you've already won?"

Consequence culture

Some media commentators (including Sunny Hostin and Levar Burton) have stated that cancel culture should be renamed consequence culture. The terms have different connotations: cancel culture focusing on the effect whereby discussion is limited by a desire to maintain one certain viewpoint, whereas consequence culture focuses on the idea that those that write or publish opinions or make statements should bear some responsibility for the effects of these on people.

In popular culture

The American animated television series South Park mocked cancel culture with its own "#CancelSouthPark" campaign in promotion of the show's twenty-second season (2018).In the season's third episode, "The Problem with a Poo", there are references to the 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu, the cancellation of Roseanne after a controversial tweet by the show's eponymous actress, and the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

In 2019, cancel culture was a primary theme in the stand-up comedy show Sticks & Stones by Dave Chappelle.

Both the Chicks, for their outspoken criticism of the Iraq War and President Bush, and Bill Maher have said they are victims of cancel culture.

Buddhist economics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Slogan in Bhutan about gross national happiness in Thimphu's School of Traditional Arts.

Buddhist economics is a spiritual and philosophical approach to the study of economics. It examines the psychology of the human mind and the emotions that direct economic activity, in particular concepts such as anxiety, aspirations and self-actualization principles. In the view of its proponents, Buddhist economics aims to clear the confusion about what is harmful and what is beneficial in the range of human activities involving the production and consumption of goods and services, ultimately trying to make human beings ethically mature. The ideology's stated purpose is to "find a middle way between a purely mundane society and an immobile, conventional society."

The most fundamental feature of Buddhist Economics is seeing "people interdependent with one another and with Nature...".

Sri Lankan economist Neville Karunatilake wrote that: "A Buddhist economic system has its foundations in the development of a co-operative and harmonious effort in group living. Selfishness and acquisitive pursuits have to be eliminated by developing man himself." Karunatilake sees Buddhist economic principles as exemplified in the rule of the Buddhist king Ashoka.

Bhutan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck and its government have promoted the concept of "gross national happiness" (GNH) since 1972, based on Buddhist spiritual values, as a counter to gauging a nation's development by gross domestic product (GDP). This represents a commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan's culture based on Buddhist spiritual values instead of material development, such as being gauged by only GDP.

U.S. economics professor Clair Brown sets up a Buddhist economics framework that integrates Amartya Sen's capability approach with shared prosperity and sustainability. In her Buddhist economics model, valuation of economic performance is based on how well the economy delivers a high quality of life to everyone while it protects the environment. In addition to domestic output (or consumption), measuring economic performance includes equity, sustainability, and activities that create a meaningful life. A person's well-being depends on cultivation of inner (spiritual) wealth even more than outer (material) wealth.

Buddhist economics holds that truly rational decisions can only be made when we understand what creates irrationality. When people understand what constitutes desire, they realize that all the wealth in the world cannot satisfy it. When people understand the universality of fear, they become more compassionate to all beings. Thus, this spiritual approach to economics doesn't rely on theories and models, but on the essential forces of acumen, empathy, and restraint. From the perspective of a Buddhist, economics and other streams of knowledge cannot be separated. Economics is a single component of a combined effort to fix the problems of humanity and Buddhist economics works with it to reach a common goal of societal, individual, and environmental sufficiency.

History

Buddhist ethics was first applied to the running of a state's economy during the rule of the Indian Buddhist emperor Ashoka (c. 268 to 232 BCE). The reign of Ashoka is famous for an extensive philanthropic and public works program, which built hospitals, hostels, parks, and nature preserves.

The term "Buddhist economics" was coined by E. F. Schumacher in 1955, when he travelled to Burma as an economic consultant for Prime Minister U Nu. The term was used in his essay named "Buddhist Economics", which was first published in 1966 in Asia: A Handbook, and republished in his influential collection Small Is Beautiful (1973). The term is currently used by followers of Schumacher and by Theravada Buddhist writers, such as Prayudh Payutto, Padmasiri De Silva, and Luang Por Dattajivo.

The 1st Conference of the Buddhist Economics Research Platform was held in Budapest, Hungary from 23–24 August 2007. The second conference was held at Ubon Ratchathani University, Thailand from 9–11 April 2009.

General views on economics

Unlike traditional economics, Buddhist economics considers stages after the consumption of a product, investigating how trends affect the three intertwined aspects of human existence: the individual, society, and the environment. For example, if there were an increase in the consumption of cigarettes, Buddhist economists try to decipher how this increase affects the pollution levels in the environment, its impact on passive smokers and active smokers, and the various health hazards that come along with smoking, thus taking into consideration the ethical side of economics. The ethical aspect of it is partly judged by the outcomes it brings and partly by the qualities that lead to it.

The Buddhist point of view ascribes to work three functions: to give man a chance to utilize and develop his aptitude; to enable him to overcome his self-aggrandizement by engaging with other people in common tasks; and to bring forward the goods and services needed for a better existence.

Differences between traditional and Buddhist economics

There are a number of differences between traditional economics and Buddhist economics.

While traditional economics concentrates on self-interest, the Buddhist view challenges it by changing the concept of self to Anatta or no-self. It posits that all things perceived by one's senses are not actually "I" or "mine" and therefore, humans must detach themselves from this feeling. Buddhist Economists believe that the self-interest based, opportunistic approach to ethics will always fail. According to Buddhist Economists, generosity is a viable economic model of mutual reciprocity, because human beings are homines reciprocantes who tend to reciprocate to feelings (either positively or negatively) by giving back more than what is given to them.
Traditional economists emphasize importance to maximizing profits and individual gains, while the underlying principle of Buddhist economics is to minimize suffering (losses) for all living or non-living things. Studies conducted by Buddhist economists correlates that human beings show greater sensitivity to loss than to gains, and concluded that people should concentrate more on reducing the former.
There is a difference with respect to the concept of desire. Traditional economics encourages material wealth and desire in which people attempt to accumulate more wealth to satisfy those cravings. In contrast, in Buddhist economics, importance is given to simplify one's desires. According to Buddhist economists, apart from the basic necessities like food, shelter, clothing, and medicines, other materialistic needs should be minimized. Buddhist economists say that overall well-being decreases if people pursue meaningless desires; wanting less will benefit the person, the community they live in, and nature overall.
Views on the market are also different. While many economists advocate maximizing markets to a point of saturation, Buddhist economists aim at minimizing violence. Traditional economics do not take into consideration "primordial stakeholders", like future generations and the natural world because their vote is not considered relevant in terms of purchasing power. They think that other stakeholders such as poor and marginalized people are under-represented because of their inadequate purchasing power and preference is given to the strongest stakeholder. Therefore, they believe that the market is not an unbiased place, but truly representative of the economy. Thus, Buddhist economists advocate ahimsa or non-violence. Ahimsa prevents doing anything that directly causes suffering to oneself or others and urges to find solutions in a participatory way. Community supported agriculture is one such example of community-based economic activities. Buddhist economists believe that community-supported agriculture fosters trust, helps build value based communities and brings people closer to the land and their food source. Achieving this sustainability and non-violence requires restructuring of dominating configurations of modern business, which they advocate. This leads to de-emphasizing profit maximization as the ultimate motive and renewed emphasis on introducing small-scale, locally adaptable, substantive economic activities.
Traditional economists try to maximize instrumental use where the value of any entity is determined by its marginal contribution to the production output while Buddhist economists feel that the real value of an entity is neither realized nor given importance to. Buddhist economists attempt to reduce instrumental use and form caring organizations that will be rewarded in terms of trust among the management, co-workers, and employees.
Traditional economists tend to believe that bigger is better and more is more, whereas Buddhist economists believe that small is beautiful and less is more.
Traditional economics gives importance to gross national product whereas Buddhist economics gives importance to gross national happiness.

Other beliefs

Buddhist economists believe that as long as work is considered a disutility for laborers and laborers a necessary evil for employers, the true potential of the laborers and employers cannot be achieved. In such a situation, employees will always prefer income without employment and employers will always prefer output without employees.

According to them, people are unable to feel liberated not because of wealth but because of their attachment to wealth. In the same way, they say that it is the craving for pleasurable baubles and not the enjoyment from them that holds humans back.

Buddhist economists do not believe in measuring standard of living by the amount of consumption because according to them, obtaining maximum well being as a result of minimum consumption is more important than obtaining maximum well being from maximum consumption. Thus, they feel that the concept of being "better off" because of greater levels of consumption is not a true measure of happiness.

Buddhist economics also gives importance to natural, renewable, and non-renewable resources. They feel that non-renewable resources should only be used when most needed and then also with utmost care, meticulously planning out its use. They believe that using them extravagantly is violent and not in keeping with the Buddhist belief of nonviolence. According to them, if the entire population relies on non-renewable resources for their existence, they are behaving parasitically, preying on capital goods instead of income. Adding to this, they feel that this uneven distribution and ever increasing exploitation of natural resources will lead to violence between man.They also believe that satisfaction need not necessarily be felt only when something tangible is got back in return for giving something or something material is gained, as stated in modern economics. They say that the feeling of satisfaction can be achieved even when one parts with something without getting anything tangible in return. An example is when one gives presents to their loved ones simply because they want them to be happy.

Buddhist economists believe that production is a very misleading term. According to them, to produce something new, the old form has to be destroyed. Therefore, production and consumption become complementary to each other. Taking this into consideration, they advocate non-production in certain cases because when one produces less materialistic things, they reduce exploitation of the world's resources and lead the life of a responsible and aware citizen.

Monday, November 8, 2021

False consciousness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Marxism

False consciousness is a term used by some to describe ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the exploitation intrinsic to the social relations between classes. Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) used the term "false consciousness" in an 1893 letter to Franz Mehring to address the scenario where a subordinate class willfully embodies the ideology of the ruling class. Engels dubs this consciousness "false" because the class is asserting itself towards goals that do not benefit it.

"Consciousness", in this context, reflects a class's ability to politically identify and assert its will. The subordinate class is conscious: it plays a major role in society and can assert its will due to being sufficiently unified in ideas and action.

Later development

Marshall I. Pomer has argued that members of the proletariat disregard the true nature of class relations because of their belief in the probability or possibility of upward mobility. Such a belief or something like it is said to be required in economics with its presumption of rational agency; otherwise wage laborers would not be the conscious supporters of social relations antithetical to their own interests, violating that presumption.

The Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of cultural hegemony, the process within capitalist societies by which the ruling classes create particular norms, values, and stigmas, amounting to a culture in which their continued dominance is considered beneficial.

Structuralism

During the late 1960s and 1970s, the philosophical and anthropological school of structuralism began to gain popularity among academics and public intellectuals, focusing on interpreting human culture in terms of underlying structures such as symbolic, linguistic, and ideological perspectives. Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser popularized his structuralist interpretation of false consciousness, the Ideological State Apparatus. Structuralism influenced Althusser's interpretation of false consciousness, which focuses on the institutions of the capitalist state⁠—particularly those of public education⁠—which enforce an ideological system favoring obedience, conformity and submissiveness.Contemporary developments

Other prominent Marxist philosophers and intellectuals developed specific interpretations of the concept of false consciousness, such as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School, Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem of the French situationist movement, the anti-colonialist writer Frantz Fanon, and contemporary philosopher Slavoj Žižek. Outside of the Marxist political ideology, the economist Edward S. Herman and linguist Noam Chomsky developed the propaganda model wherein information is selectively broadcast to serve the ends of a deeply centralized ownership of private media industries.

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Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Technocracy

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Technological utopianism

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From the 19th to mid-20th centuries

From late 20th and early 21st centuries

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Monday, November 8, 2021

False consciousness

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Structuralism

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