We are trapped in self-interest: Part 2 - the politics of me

This article is the second of a two-part series in which I offer a perspective on our current challenges. This represents a surface-level, snapshot view. A starting point from which in the subsequent posts I will investigate the historical roots, ideas and metanarratives which might help explain the present, and inform my perspective on it.

In the previous piece, I explored how the competitive nature of a society dominated by economics has bled into our human relationships, making them transactional and impersonal, and turning us into ‘homo-economicus’, or ‘economic man’.

Homo-economicus exists within a ‘dog eat dog world’. To succeed within capitalism, someone has to lose. In reality, dogs don’t normally eat dogs, unless pushed to the very extremes of hunger. In fact, the origins of the phrase offer a stark warning. The expression finds its roots in a Latin proverb that states “dog does not eat dog”, arguing that even dogs have their limits. The proverb was in the context of cannibalism, imploring humans to remain civilised and show respect for their fellow man.?

One of the earliest records of the phrase flipping on its head and becoming ‘Dog eat dog’ was recorded in The Examiner? in the early 19th century, around the time when the industrial revolution was really picking up speed. It referred to the cannibalistic tendencies of modern commerce, and the need to take chunks out of our fellow man (economically speaking), in order to win. Rather than heeding the warning of the phrase, our economic reality has come to embody it. We only see our society as a dog eat dog world because we have created a system which makes us compete to survive, with little safety net to catch those who fall.

I briefly looked at the interpersonal and economic consequences of a self-interested ‘dog-eat-dog’ world in the previous piece, but a society based around self-interest also requires a political context in which to thrive.

The political vehicle for self-interest

The political vehicle for the pursuit of self-interest in the West is modern liberal systems. In a laissez-faire society, the government is imagined largely as an institution to maintain the operation of the markets. This means an emaciation of state capacity and the erosion of public services, which has resulted in reduced trust in government, amplified by the reality that small-state neoliberalism has gutted governments capabilities to react to challenges.?

Politics is also not immune to the ‘win-at-all-costs’ approach that capitalism encourages. Governments themselves have become captured by narrow economic interests. This is both within government in the economic and influence benefits that individuals and groups within government can get through their relationships with private actors, as well as the benefits corporations and investors receive through their interactions with government. From campaign finance, to the revolving door of politicians between corporations, lobbyists and government, to cronyism, to the invitation of ‘industry bodies’ into the policy making process, to full on state capture in places like South Africa, governments do not, and often cannot serve the people who elect them.?

Governments are too often are beholden to political and economic interests, and therefore any noble incentives which may be associated with public service are quickly whittled away by the reality of our political systems. This means the politicians who win are often those who play the game - are willing to have quid-pro-quo relationships with the business community whilst taking the public for a ride at the same time. Genuine public servants are either corrupted into the system, are ineffective, or quickly leave politics for less personally corrosive pastures.

Beyond this, stripped away from any conception of ‘the common good’, the most that politics can do in its current conception is to protect the rights and freedoms of the individual. It should be said that compared to what came before in Europe, which was often characterised by monarchic, religious, hierarchical and often superstitious rule, a shift to the rational, reasonable individual as the primary focus in society was completely revolutionary, and is at the root of much of what we hold dear. Ensuring the rights and freedoms of the individual is an important baseline, therefore, but beyond this politics has little role in fostering or facilitating debate around virtue or morality in its citizens, and any attempt to bring conversations of ‘the good life’ into the realm of politics have become embroiled in the chaos of the culture wars.?We exist within a 'politics of me' rather than 'a politics of we'.

There is no constructive realm for differences of opinion to be aired and deliberated, and therefore toxic echo-chambers emerge on social media, and keyboard wars take place in Twitter (never to be known as X) threads. Although the culture wars are indicative of the reemergence of a societal instinct to reintroduce conversations of morality and values into society, it has been weaponised and turned into an instrument for ‘divide and rule’ politics. All this serves as a distraction while the political system continues to entrench the power and influence of narrow economic interests.?

When we do decide to participate as citizens of society, this is rarely due to any solidarity or common vision of society that we wish to pursue. When we decide to form a coalition with other individuals, we are often doing so to maximise individual benefit within a collective setting. Our current social contract in its current form is exactly that - a contract. We agree to enter into collaboration with other citizens in order to maximise our self-interest, and we license certain powers to the state in order for them to effectively create an environment in which we can attempt to maximise self-interest. In this sense, it is in our rational self-interest to be part of society, but any societal projects must at least give the impression of value neutrality as their only mandate is to enable the individual. This leaves us unable to answer questions such as “how should our society be?”.?

Collective rational pursuit of self-interest cannot address the scale of the challenges we face. Climate change, for example, is a global issue, but its impacts are not evenly distributed. Therefore a country like the U.K. whose people are at lower immediate risk may collectively pursue their rational economic self-interest by investing in fossil fuels, with the cost being environmental disasters in the Global South. Pursuit of self-interest is inherently competitive, and unless the conception of ‘interests’ extends to the considerations of the global population, and even beyond, to nature and to future generations, there will always be those who lose.?

There are instances where international collaboration has seen exciting progress, such as in the creation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, but sufficient action to address global challenges and fix global systems is failing and will continue to fail if we do not address the competitive, self-interested approach that pervades every element of life. To address the challenges we face, and build a vision for society, we need to go beyond the pursuit of self-interest, and assess different ways of determining value, meaning, purpose and worth. We do not have the capacity nor mechanisms in place to formulate these alternative conceptions, however, due to the nature of our economic and political setup.?

The void of meaning has created a neoliberal-populist feedback loop

As we have been systematically divided from each other, the cult of the individual has combined with the strenuous demands of simply surviving within a brutally competitive and exploitative economic system. If you win within this system, then there is no incentive for you to change it (in many cases there is the opposite). If you lose, you have no time, energy, nor space to try and understand the systemic roots of the challenges we face (especially in the face of propaganda, misinformation, corporations with giant public affairs budgets etc), nor to engage in collective action to attempt to address these problems. Outside of the ballot box, we have few constructive outlets for politics and therefore we lack agency in shaping society. The combination of division, a lack of agency, a relativistic void, and mounting crises is a recipe for hopelessness, depression and anxiety.?

Hopelessness creates a desperate search for solutions and meaning. When combined with ignorance of the drivers of the problems we face this poses a dangerous threat. Populist and authoritarian forces who single out some faceless ‘elite’ or scapegoat vulnerable or marginalised groups including Muslims and refugees (I am writing this during the hateful anti-Islamic riots targeting refugees in the U.K, organised by far right nationalist groups). Rather than pose a genuine alternative, these groups prey on people’s fear and hopelessness, and in so doing further remove us from conversations as to the actual drivers of our societal challenges. This creates a vicious feedback loop, where extreme populist forces who do not represent a genuine alternative out themselves as unsuited for governance, or their promises are revealed to be hollow, the natural bounceback is towards the ‘safe’ status quo - capitalist, neoliberal actors (The Trump-Biden feedback loop).?

Whilst genuine alternatives struggle to gain traction, whether due to the recognition that they fundamentally threaten narrow interests or due to the fact that their message is necessarily complex and potentially cautious (take degrowth for an example), populist forces slow the process of actual change. Narrow interests void of values blow with the wind, with big business giving and withholding support for status quo actors and populists according to the potential they hold for their interests, knowing full well that neither threaten the economic status quo that serves them. The status quo vs. populist battle as we see it today leaves the public stuck between a rock and a hard place. The root causes are not being spoken about or addressed (even Starmer’s new Labour government is deeply neoliberal and obsessed with growth).?

The diagnosis above does not refer to all of society. In certain places communities flourish, economic models and modes of governance which serve the people and honour nature do exist, and they are allowed to as long as they do not threaten the dominating narratives. As soon as they do, interest groups, industry associations, multinational corporations, neoliberal think tanks and the politicians who are psychologically and economically beholden to them will mobilise and unleash the full force of their influence to crush, discredit, or co-opt them into the capitalist system, or simply allow them burn themselves out, paddling upstream against the rushing current of narrow interests.

To me, therefore, we have found ourselves at a point where the pursuit of self-interest has trapped us. It has poisoned the way in which we interact with each other, making even our relationships with our friends competitive. It has trapped us in an economic system which is exploitative and intolerant of other models to the point of violence. This system depends on there being losers for its existence, whether that be poorer countries in the global south, the poor within countries, or nature. It has trapped us in both a psychological and social state which prevents us from identifying the true roots of our problems and promotes a combative, individualistic approach to values and ideas, rather than a collective approach with the potential to address shared challenges. It has trapped us in a political system which is captured by narrow interests, and does not have the mandate or capacity to confront those narrow interests or address the challenges we face at local, international and planetary level, never mind enact a vision of how society should look.?

We are left screaming into the void, innately able to feel the weight of the challenges we face, but lacking the tools to recognise and understand it, as well as the ideas and mechanisms to address it.?

I have painted a pretty bleak picture, and for that I apologise. Within this bleak broad picture, there are countless instances of beauty, friendship, kindness, ideas and community. The broad picture is the one that needs to be addressed, however, if the values and aspects of human nature that thrive in the corners of society, and which hold great potential for the future of humanity and the planet, are to come to the forefront.

This is the picture as I see it now. The challenges we face, and the traps we have fallen (or been pushed) into, have deep roots. These roots are formed of a complex network of ideas, individuals, events and systems. In order to sophisticate my understanding of the issues we face now, and gain inspiration for how to address them, I need to dig deep into these roots.

Metanarratives revisited

In the previous piece, I briefly touched on the concept of ‘metanarratives’ as a tool for helping us understand the world around us as it is, as well as a key to deciphering the historical winds of change which have carried us up to the present day, and can help explain its emergence.

Blaise Pascal posited that the human condition is defined by the greatness and wretchedness of man. This duality as an inherent part of human nature means that while metanarratives can bring the best out of us en-masse, it also makes us manipulatable to the causes of others, unless we have well trained defences. This is essentially the story that metanarratives tell - they show the emergence, harnessing, incentivisation and prioritisation of different aspects of our nature, and the suppression of others within a broader context.

Understanding our challenges, therefore, involves tracing the evolution of metanarratives and how they have shaped and impacted society, from our relationship to ourselves, our relationship to each other, our relationship to politics, and our relationship to the planet.?

The story I will be telling in the following pieces is to try and understand how these metanarratives have evolved, specifically looking at where capitalism fits within this, and how it has shifted from being an economic tool operating within the contexts of broader contexts, to becoming a metanarrative in and of itself.